The Nature of Agnosticism Part 1

I've never quite understood, what appears to be, the strong need to associate ones identity with categorical membership. Given this, I hesitantly refer to myself as an Agnostic. I do this because it has avoided, to some extent, rigid definition contrary to other stances; so on this ground I am keen to associate oneself with the label. Agnostics sit adjacent to, rather than opposed to, traditional binaries such as Theism vs Atheism; and can more broadly be applicable in conversations about political and economic ideologies. I've always view Agnosticism as a disposition, a collection of habits, pattern of inquiry, or an attitude toward uncertainty rather than a specific philosophical position towards certain metaphysical doctrines. Of course, there are certain assumptions an Agnostic holds; without a starting point, reasoning would surely be impossible. However, these assumptions seem to be extremely minimal; there is no need to add on any other unfounded base assumptions. This post isn't to "prove" Agnosticism as "correct"; that would entirely miss the point. Instead I want to illustrate some of these tendencies and illuminate the concept so people can be exposed to a deeper sense of the word, from the perspective of someone who has never been able to call himself anything but an Agnostic.

I won't dwell on definitions but for a useful introduction to Agnosticism the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a nice article differentiating it from other forms of non-belief. The term was originally coined by T.H. Huxley, he stated that he:

invented the word “Agnostic” to denote people who, like [himself], confess themselves to be hopelessly ignorant concerning a variety of matters [including of course the matter of God’s existence], about which metaphysicians and theologians, both orthodox and heterodox, dogmatise with the utmost confidence. (1884)

His position was a weak form of evidentialism; something I take to be necessary and fundamental to rationality (although not sufficient). Not all propositions are in the evidential domain so this is obviously not exhaustive. I am not arguing that I know the universal set of criteria sufficient for establishing the truth of any claim; the point of agnosticism is that I am fine without knowing. What I seem to know is that there is a partially complete set of methods we've come to discover through trial and error; and with haste, I can use these tools for establishing basic truths about reality. We can refine and contract this set of methods over time, and hence the conclusions established from these methods will need to readjust over time. This leads to the second feature of Agnosticism; acceptance of Fallibility. Certainty is something all dogmatic ideologies strive for; the agnostic sees them as failing to establish anything resembling strong reason for belief. There just always seems to be exceptions to rules. Consider the statement "All birds can fly"; the classic penguin case illustrates the defeasibility of reason outside of formal contexts. Human reason in natural language is inherently non-monotonic. Notice that none of what I mentioned is inherently connected to Theism, but accepting these basic assumptions surely has implications for theistic belief; or any other set of beliefs requiring strict adherence to basic dogma that contradict these principles. Also notice how all of this is connected to Knowledge, not belief (hence the Greek root "gnosis" meaning "to know"). They key to agnosticism is understanding the relationship between knowledge and belief; the former always required for the latter, even a minimal set of knowledge. I think a guiding principle of my Agnosticism is something of prudence; given the massive set of competing claims lacking substantiation, remain critical, skeptical, and flexible to incoming information; corollary, do not hesitate to eliminate unlikely hypotheses from the set of potential explanations just because "it is possible". Another guiding principle is Consistency; however you choose to apply these methods just ensure there is no special pleading. To me, this is a very basic formulation of my approach; but there are many propositions in which I am Strongly Agnostic, something I will touch on later.

What I stated above shouldn't be controversial. I've merely discussed a bit of epistemology, stating that some form of empiricism must be fundamental, our knowledge is fallible, and pure reason outside of formal languages is non-monotonic. I don't feel obligated to take an "official philosophical stance" on the topic of epistemology because I view all of this as a work in progress. There seem to be advantages and disadvantages to every position. I see no problem combining elements, like what Susan Haack does with Foundherentism. I am also attracted to Reliablist Epistemology; this will be clear later with some of my examples, a reliable mechanism for inference is one that produces similar output given identical input information. If you are using a method that constantly produces conflicting results, then that is a problem. I am trained in Statistics and Probability so you'll find that my Agnosticism doesn't resemble the agnostic philosophers who adhere to one "tradition" of epistemology; reliabilism seems consistent with basic statistical modeling procedures such as sensitivity analysis. As mentioned above, my attitude as an Agnostic does not stipulate the necessity for a "fresh-out-the-oven" metaphysical doctrine I can adhere to for comfort. I can already see the scorched earth debunking tactic coming: that fallbilism is somehow "self defeating". There is a difference between stating "For all P in S" vs "At least one P in S therefore S has property Q".

So far all I've done is explicate some basic principles and decision rules that might be applicable to someone calling themselves an "Agnostic". I would like to add in another principle and demonstrate its use in the form of an example. The Agnostic apportions their credence in a belief in accordance with the amount, strength, stability, and examinability (and many more criteria, this is not exhaustive) of the knowledge we have in relation to that belief. In other words, if there is nothing we can know about something, then there is no sufficient grounds for accepting the belief (and all of the baggage that comes with it). Cases where knowledge is impossible are ones characterized by Knightian Uncertainty (it seems that Economists sometimes contribute to the Human stock of knowledge). Frank Knight characterizes it as:

"Uncertainty must be taken in a sense radically distinct from the familiar notion of Risk, from which it has never been properly separated.... The essential fact is that 'risk' means in some cases a quantity susceptible of measurement, while at other times it is something distinctly not of this character; and there are far-reaching and crucial differences in the bearings of the phenomena depending on which of the two is really present and operating.... It will appear that a measurable uncertainty, or 'risk' proper, as we shall use the term, is so far different from an unmeasurable one that it is not in effect an uncertainty at all."

Now for some technical jargon; risk is inherently connected to "exposure", the loss or gain associated with uncertain outcomes of interest. If risk is calculable (measurable), we can speak about the uncertainty of something in a sensible way. Immeasurable risk leads us to a state of Knightian uncertainty; there is no empirical or principled way to ascertain knowledge of probabilities in these situations. These might also be classified as extreme VUCA conditions:

V = Volatility: Characterizes the rapid and unpredictable nature of change.
U = Uncertainty: Denotes the unpredictability of events and issues.
C = Complexity: Describes the intertwined forces and issues, making cause-and-effect relationships unclear.
A = Ambiguity: Points to the unclear realities and potential misunderstandings stemming from mixed messages.

VUCA is a framework for managerial decision making under uncertainty but it obviously extends beyond these problem domains to general decision making. How does this relate to Agnosticism? Well, in situations where we are unable to extract any meaningful knowledge due to conditions of Knightian uncertainty, exacerbated by the inherent limitations of knowledge generating faculties, it is important to remain agile in the face of rapid change due to volatile conditions. My question simply becomes, why not apply this to deeper philosophical and metaphysical positions? Questions like these are inherently ambiguous. One conclusion I've drawn is that some of the political and religious narratives exploit our ambiguity aversion. This leads me to yet another principle of what I perceive inherent to Agnosticism: the lack of ambiguity intolerance. As mentioned in the beginning, I've been perplexed by the seeming need to associate a sense of identity with rigid doctrinal affiliations; perhaps an Agnostic is one who is simply unbothered to avoid the uncertainty associated with deep metaphysical philosophizing.

Here is a simple example that illustrates some of what I've been mentioning thus far. Suppose you have a box. Something may be contained in the box. Something might not be contained in the box. You have a couple of methods at your disposal for uncovering what lay within the box. One is pure reason; I can reason about what possibly exists in the box. My reasoning can be elaborate. It can be a formal system with rigorously defined axioms. However, it can also be subject to refutation based on counter-arguments, rejection of the axioms, rejection of certain fundamental truths etc. We can possibly appeal to some standard by which we reject competing arguments, but the standards can be objected to, leading us to infinite regress. Competing standards can yield differing results. Burden of proof, burden of production, or burden of persuasion can be invoked, questioned, or argued over. It is as if, we cannot determine the existence of what is in the box based purely on reason. After all of this, we can still result in a false conclusion despite having the most sound reasoning or logical structure. So, if not reason alone, perhaps sensory experience in the form of empirical evidence, observation, experiment, testimony etc. Maybe there is some sort of evidence indicating what is in the box. Perhaps there is, physical evidence on the edges of some sort that we can observe, which combined with a set of background information, could yield a marginal improvement of one hypothesis relative to a set of other hypotheses. A lot of knowledge (like from pure reason) can be known from this sort of inquiry. But maybe we have not exhausted our set of hypotheses. Perhaps our tentative probability assignment will change conditional on some new information. So then how do we assign the relevant probabilities to our prior beliefs? It seems as if, we would just be assuming what we intend on proving by explicitly assigning priors that favor one hypothesis over another. Apart from opening the box, and revealing what lay beneath, we can only infer using plausible reasoning (I make this distinction from probability explicit for a reason). What if some guy testifies that he swears he knows what is in the box, that it was revealed to him by the box itself. How would we go about assessing his testimony? What if someone else contradicts his testimony? It seems that testimony begs the question as to how the testifier knows what they proclaim (which always brings me back to this gem). So it seems, we cannot prove what is in the box a-priori or a-posteriori. It is a black box, not yielding to our inquiry. Which brings me back to the main point as to the nature of Agnosticism. The Theist looks at the box and says, we can know. We know what is in that box, through reason or evidence. The Atheist says, we know nothing is in that box, through reason or evidence. The agnostic looks at the box, recognizes this is a problem of abduction, recognizes their own ignorance, and claims that at this current state we do not know and do not have the methods available to know; but are willing to revise beliefs in the face of change. We must rely on Heuristics in an ever changing world, and consider plausibility, not probability in these instances. This leads to yet another principle I think governing my agnosticism; I am skeptical of highly presumptuous individuals who profess to know with certainty what is in that box. An agnostic will likely reject outright "we don't know therefore X" type of arguments. But this obviously raises interesting questions such as: why does anyone feel compelled to have closer on such a question? Anyway, I've found a video called The Black Box of Empirical Falsification that seems to correspond with what I am trying to express; it's a clever way to demonstrate the point.

What are some specific philosophical positions of an Agnostic? Well, again there is nothing necessary linking agnosticism to any particular position but I'd imagine agnostics would cluster around some form of metaphysical naturalism. There is nothing binding an agnostic to this position. It is possible to believe in non-natural entities while rejecting theism. I've no problem adhering to naturalism as a default position; I think most people do this regardless of whatever belief system they profess. We simply do not have an appropriate grammar to speak of something that is non-natural; everything we conceive of has to be reduced to some natural analogue we are familiar with. This is the basis for anthropomorphic deities and other entities "beyond" the natural world. Even by saying that "there is something else beyond our understanding" presupposes some form we might be familiar with; there would be no other way to communicate without grounding these metaphors in human experience. For centuries philosophers have wrote about this Platonic realm; Nietzsche referred to it as the philosophy of the true world. As an agnostic, I've never found it necessary to believe in some Platonic Realist metaphysical realm where an actual "2" "exists"; therefore I suppose this makes me somewhat of a nominalist but conceptualist metaphysics have also been appealing to me. I don't have a ready made argument for defending these stances, I just know over time I've come to reject Platonism when it comes to universals especially after being exposed to 4E Embodied Cognition. I guess this leads to another principle of an Agnostic; it is far easier identifying what to reject than what to accept, and to reach conclusions based on a sort of eliminative reasoning.

I think John Searle's Social Ontology would resonate with an Agnostic. One of the takeaways I gained from these lectures was Searle's distinction between the ontological and epistemic senses of the words "Objective" and "Subjective". He also distinguishes the notions of Intrinsic and Observer Relative Properties which I've found to be useful. I've always been somewhat perplexed by arbitrary dichotomies including the objective subjective dichotomy; and yet this distinction pervades many philosophical disputes. It's always seemed to me that a lot of confusion comes from this particular distinction especially within interpersonal disputes; one word being used pejoratively and another authoritatively. Searle's analysis resonates with me because I think Agnostics tend to appreciate nuances within concepts such as these and tend to be repulsed by reduction of nuance to simplistic distinctions. That is one point. The second point for bringing up this distinction is that belief systems tend to be dependent on this misunderstanding.

Take an example of someone having a religious experience. Which quadrant would this fall in? The experience is ontologically subjective, but the cause could potentially be epistemically objective. Whatever experience the person is having, they might actually be having it, in a subjective sense because experiences are conditional on the existence of someone capable of having an experience. Religious experiences tend to be attributed to some divine intervention however; now we are in the epistemic discussion. Someone can say "I know it was God" in an epistemically objective sense, but if we replicate the conditions under which people report having these experiences and identify contextual factors such as music, psychological priming, and persuasive speaking, we can conclude in an epistemically objective sense that there are at least other plausible explanations causing the experience. We can then go even further and investigate other reported experiences; identifying inconsistencies between experiences might favor the alternative hypothesis that you were mistaken about the cause. And from the perspective of someone having the experience, why would you not investigate this line of inquiry? If you believe that God exists because of some religious experience, why wouldn't you realize that at best this is prima facie evidence that is highly defeasible and subject to counterexamples? Perhaps this is a distinguishing factor between an agnostic and a theist; I would most certainly question the validity of whatever happened. A few defeaters come to mind: massive disagreement with regards to the diversity of religious experiences (undermining the veridicality of any particular experience since many are radically divergent about their content), mistaking an experience with a specific interpretation of some event (ask yourself if the fact under question is simply being misinterpreted as something divine, since you are predisposed to interpret events in particular ways consistent with the interpretive framework you have inherited from your community), irreligious experience (if experience is favorable to theism, then the massive amount of non-religious experience should not be overlooked and ought to count as disconfirmation), and understated evidence (ignoring evidence particular to the situation that would undermine the veracity of the experience). The very fact that religious experiences are so vague and indeterminant should lead us to suspend judgement about any particular interpretation or understanding of the event. We ought to recognize that religious experiences are explainable and expected on a naturalistic framework; in other words, these sorts of experiences are entirely consistent with, and give credence to, a naturalistic view of the world. I mean you really just have to ask yourself: "Is contact with the divine the best explanation of what I am experiencing?" The interesting thing about different answers to this question, come from the fact that prior religious exposure tends to be causally connected to alleged religious experience, and the content of the experience is almost always consistent with the specific tradition dominating a culture. Previous religious exposure/training tends to condition someone to perceive events a certain way. For example, some unlikely event or aesthetic thing in nature being attributed divine significance. If you have a strong prior belief in something like God, then many events will be spontaneously interpreted as something related to god, or the divine. Differing traditions also tend to explain their experiences in terms of their own conception of the divine. For example, people living in the Western Hemisphere tend to have experiences of Jesus and in the Middle East people claim to have experiences of Allah. Even more specifically, in Catholic contexts, there have been alleged experiences of Our Lady Fatima exemplified by the Miracle of the Sun event. How do incompatible religions/denominations explain these contradictory experiences? Evil demons of course. But obviously this begs the quest; how do you know that your own religious experience is not caused by some evil demon? In principle, there is no way of showing some experience is caused by a demon, so this "explanation" does not work. All of this is consistent and expected on a naturalistic view of human behavior. Most religious experiences are consistent with predominate cultural beliefs and align with what people already believe; something expected if god does not exist. Why would we give any credence to religious experience? As mentioned before, especially for exclusive religions, alternative religious experiences are explained away as something demonic, or unreliable. This would entail the majority of religious experience being unreliable. But on what basis are we able to say one experience is more reliable than competing experiences? In The Wisdom To Doubt, p. 175, J. L. Schellenberg notes "If so many religious experiential practices are unreliable, then why not this one? If my powerful experiences full of apparent meaningfulness and illumination may come to persons of intelligence and virtue and yet be completely delusive, then what reason do you have to have to suppose that such is not the case here? ... How do you know that the truth about ultimate things has not been apprehended in one of those other practices? Or might all these practices be getting it wrong, for lack of the fuller understanding that only a completely different religious or nonreligious approach could bring?" When you drill down and start asking people about their particular experience, they typically give some deflationary account incompatible with the narratives of revelation in scripture. Someone might say "I felt immense joy" or "I felt complete peace"; something very different from the biblical revelations we are demanded to believe. But everyone can feel these emotions; there is nothing special about it, and like mentioned before, many people can feel an utter absence/emptiness that would strongly contradict these other experiences. Of course, no one can get into someone else's head to fully verify whether this was caused by some supernatural entity. The point is that doubt is a useful ally in this situation. Religious experiences CAN have natural causes. There is a significant amount research on the priming effects preceding religious experience. And there is no known way to differentiate the experiences that have natural causes from those alleged to have supernatural causes.

For a full discussion on this line of reasoning, see "The X-Claim Argument Against Religious Belief" by Stephen Law.

Anyways, my point is that clarifying the sense in which we use terminology is important. I think it is useless to argue that someone is lying that they've experienced what they believe to be God. There are plenty of genuine people who attribute these mystical experiences to something metaphysical. From an agnostic perspective, I am just saying that in principle it would seem impossible to demonstrate that the source is something divine.

I think I'll list out what I think someone calling themselves an Agnostic might tend to agree with. These obviously don't exclusively apply to Agnosticism; I'm not here to be a gatekeeper.

How vs. Why (Questions): shift away from “Why” questions to “What” and “How”. "Why" implies an agential explanation; in order to know "why" you must resort to reasoning about motivations. Unless you know agency was involved, shift away from asking "why" questions.
Teleology vs. Mechanism: a description of an objects functioning and relation to other objects substituted in place of “What is the purpose of a thing” , it’s telos. This is a corollary to number one. You should not look at nature and ask "why" since it assumes agency.
Wants to understand processes and structure versus “purpose”; this is secondary and dependent on our own goals.
Rejection of Mind-Body Dualism: Not necessarily a materialist, physicalist, reductionist, or “scientism”, but acknowledges that material configurations can explain many phenomenon and cognition is embedded. Acknowledges the role of information. “Ghost in the machine” is relevant.
Desire to know How a thing works: Everyone wants to know how a thing works, but the explanatory criteria shifts away from “Gods Will” to something mechanical, explainable by the senses, reason, or experimentation. “Revelation” is completely insufficient as an explanation.
View of animals (They are not automatons) and nature: We are part of nature, are influenced by it, and can influence it. It is not somehow inferior to us, or separate from us.
Commitment to methodology, not revelation or authority. Truth isn't something merely asserted by a prophet; it is the result of inquiry given, some methodology or procedure for identifying/distinguishing true claims from false claims.
Evidence based conclusions will take priority when considering historical claims.
Abductive Reasoning and Inference to Best Explanation; acknowledges the necessary defeasibility when exploring metaphysical claims; this is fundamentally constraining.
Assumption Revision: Even the most deeply held ones. Beliefs are not held as dogma. Fallibility, doubt, and uncertainty are intertwined with the human condition. This is understood and embraced.
Acknowledges the Role of Metaphor in understanding. Hesitant to accept grand narratives but does not exclude them as a form of inquiry, expression, or mode of understanding. Makes a distinction between our governing metaphors and reality.
Dedication to controlled trials, statistical experimentation, and principles of causal inference for explaining observable phenomenon.
General lack of care for being “right” about deep metaphysical propositions that are far removed from practical application. Skeptical of the possibility of metaphysical knowledge.
Skeptical of radical claims made in Scripture. Open to discussion, if archaeological evidence warrants it, or external sources confirm such claims. Does not view scripture as the infallible word of god, recognizes all of the human factors that contribute to its construction.
Tests basic assumptions and world views; testability and measurability take priority.
Tipping points, phase transitions, path dependence, and emergence are fundamental to understanding nature: The world is random and complex. Maybe we can only partially understand it with our current mental models.
Actively tries to minimize the impact of cognitive bias, fallacious reasoning, and egocentric/ethnocentric tendencies.
Evolution is not a belief, it is also a very useful concept that is applicable to many domains. Theories are not “just theories”.
Evidence is usually undetermined, one piece of evidence is typically consistent with multiple explanations. We can rank different sources of evidence and their reliability to gain confidence in a conclusion (think of a murder trial or anything in law)
Very Socratic with their approach to life, the only thing they are certain of is that they aren't certain of anything.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and a coherent theory explaining the observations. This is simply a trivial application of Bayesian reasoning.
Sensitivity analysis applied to everything: How does my understanding of something change when conditions are different? Under what conditions am I wrong? If I adjust these specifications, how might our conclusion change?
Probably aware of the conditional nature of knowledge, the contingency of things, skeptical of metaphysical “necessary truths”.
Not moved by aphorisms, words of wisdom, and can find exceptions easily within vacuous moral or ethical generalizations. Understands the vagueness and ambiguity inherent in natural language; and subsequent problems of interpretation.
Possibility is a very intriguing concept that gets them thinking. Definitions are not blindly accepted. Might ask the question "why is X defined in such a way?"
I have a book titled “Principles of Systems Science” on my shelf. This is not a prerequisite to agnosticism but it greatly influenced how I view complex systems. Conceiving reality as a network of relations is useful.
Rejects Divine Command and Privation theories of morality: not necessarily committed to any particular meta ethical theory grounding an objective morality, but is certainly aware of contenders, and does not rule out subjectivist/relativistic approaches a priori. Remains neutral on this topic, but via negative reasoning, determines that theistic groundings are inherently problematic. Words like “Good” are related to eudaimonia, eupraxophy, and Ataraxia. Leans towards a humanistic conception of ethics, but not dogmatically. Extropianism, sentiocentrism, Ahimsa, ecocentrism, and secular humanism are approaches that might cluster around agnosticism. Epicurean ethics, Virtue ethics, Alternatives to the 10 Commandments, Contractarianism , and Ancient Ethical Theories more broadly make sense to an agnostic.
Stresses the importance of Verification and Validation: A corollary; seeks disconfirming evidence in addition to confirming evidence, reasoning empirically via negitiva. Stresses reliability and reproducibility in many aspects of life.
Probably the most important on this list: Does not have a problem saying "I don't know".

Three follow-ups to this list...

First, agnostics are probably skeptical of dubious argument structures. Most arguments for god take one of these forms:

“X can only exist / be the case if God, X , therefore God”
“X is like Y in some aspect, X requires god, therefore Y requires God”,
“X is some currently unexplained phenomenon, X can only make sense if God, therefore God”.

When you realize this, you see that a) there is no direct or indirect proof for god, b) these structures are question begging, and c) many structurally weak arguments cannot come together to form a cumulative case; that itself requires an analogy between collectives and arguments, it's not necessarily the case that multiple arguments accumulate to create a substantial case. At best, these arguments can merely hint at the possibility of existence, they are not deductions (mostly analogies), and they don’t come close to satisfying the modern standards of knowledge required to establish the truth of a claim; at best they are very cute little thought experiments. My favorite example of such an utter failure is the argument from desire, but there are plenty more which I'll talk more about in later posts. The problem of arguing about the existence of a god is the asymmetry of possible responses someone can use to defend an argument for god. On the theistic side of the debate, you can simply invoke an omnipotent god. The only thing limiting them at this point is their own imagination. God can literally do anything on this view, meaning that the possible responses to objections like “why would god do X” or “X seems unexpected if god exists”, can literally always be met with “well god could have done it for reason Y”. They will say “it seems plausible that god would do XYX”; because there really isn’t an established definition of god, (some say god is undefinable) and yet still reason about what “god probably would have done” or “god plausibly did it for this reason”; literally anything goes. There are no rules. "Plausibility" when applied to an omnipotent being, allows for anything. On the side of the non-believer, you simply cannot argue against any of these divine psychological explanations, other than pointing out inconsistencies. There is no established algorithm for determining if some alleged hypothetical explanation is plausible. Non-believers do not have the flexibility to conjure up arbitrary hypotheticals about a supernatural entities intentions. This type of reasoning is the precise form of ad hoc reasoning people employ when they’re defending conspiracy theories or when there are no evidences for their stance. By invoking an agential explanation , you can make up an infinite amount of non sense, slap the word “plausible” or “it’s not impossible that…” and then carry about your business thinking you won an argument. The video Putting faith in its place expresses my own sentiment.

Second, agnostics will probably reject the “need to explain X” mind set. The fact of the human condition is that there are more unexplained phenomena then explained. Theists recognize this, but feel the need to explain away the uncertainty by referencing a god. They will point to something like the alleged “fine tuning of the universe for life” and claim “this demands an explanation”, as if understanding the nature of physical constants is a necessary requirement to go about your daily life. This sets up a cat and mouse dynamic in apologetics, the theist can constantly seize on some fact that’s currently unexplained, cite the lack of explanation, insert god, and applaud themselves. They substitute poor argument in place of agnosticism in light of radical uncertainty. An agnostic will recognize that these “facts demanding explanation” actually don’t need any explaining, we can simply be neutral until a well established explanation is offered. The theist seizes on our insecurities by claiming “it NEEDS explanation”, and since we don’t accept their insufficient explanations but don’t have a proof of our own, the argument from ignorance succeeds at convincing people who require this ambiguity to be resolved. But obviously this is ridiculous. If you wake up tomorrow and your bank account shows zero balance but the night before it has money, this would presumably “demand” an explanation . There is a direct pragmatic need to understand what happened. Theists will claim that these currently unexplained features of reality need an explanation because it’s a matter of going to hell or not, soul salvation. But this literally begs the question. I first need to adopt the specific flavor of theism to assume whether or not the question is of importance because of the alleged consequences. I need to adopt the framework , but this is the very thing under question. So no, the question is not important; you first must demonstrate that your claims are true, and only then can we assess whether the consequences of not deciding (Bayesian regret) holds. So it is question begging. So therefore, we can remain agnostic and be comfortable in doubting bad theistic arguments; there is no “existential need” to answer these questions. And like I mentioned before, the game is endless. Theists can always point to some unexplained fact and allege that it can only be explained if god is real. And they just so happen to ignore all of the other facts that were presumed to be explained with reference to god. They just so happen to forget their own track record and performance when it comes to their explanatory framework, all of the losses as our understanding has expanded.

Third, Modified Divine Command Theory (MDCT) is a profoundly weak moral theory. If “to be moral” means to follow the commands of a “competent relevant authority”, but this authority is literally imperceptible, then literally anyone can claim high moral status because they had “some revelation”, literally everything is permissible because we have no way of distinguishing illegitimate “revelations” that don’t beg the question of gods existence. Let’s put this system into practice; someone does something we would consider “bad”, they claim they did it because god told them to do it. A defender of MDCT says “god couldn’t have commanded that because he’s all good, and that was bad”. In other words, they doubt the legitimacy of the alleged “revelation” on grounds the behavior is inconsistent with the defenders conception of “the good”. They may point to something in the Bible saying murder is wrong, and hence it must be demonic possession they experienced. The problem is we can point to biblically sanctioned murder, we assume it’s not murder because the biblical narrative tells us the Bible is the revealed word of god. So in that case it’s permissible. So you have to assume the Bible is the revealed word of god, and that this person is not experiencing god. But that’s exactly the point; in order to say whether a behavior is the result of a divine commander, you literally just have to assume it to be the case. There is no way to differentiate between a command from god, and mere “voices in your head”. MDCT is actually a subjective theory of morality masquerading as objective; everything reduces to the legitimacy of an alleged revelation, or what can be considered a valid command from this imperceptible god. Since there is no way of verifying valid from invalid religious experience, everything can be reduced to “because god told me so, and I know I’m right”, because in practice we can’t point to actual cases of a divine command. This is why in debates WLC says he knows the Nazis were bad because “deep down he felt it to be true” (I think this is from the Arif Ahmed debate). This is precisely what a subjective theory is, it comes down to “feeling” whether it is actually gods command “telling you to act in a specific way”. If moral duties come from an authority we literally cannot perceive, the person claiming revelation becomes a surrogate for god; they believe they are doing gods will, and it would be immoral not to do so. The funny thing about divine command theory is that it can never even get off the ground. It claims the metaphysical basis of morality originates in a personified god figure. Has god been demonstrably proven? To my knowledge no. If we claim morality comes from a source that doesn’t have a proof or evidence for existence, we’re simply not making any arguments at all, we are just playing make believe. Every “moral ought” has an implicit assumption “if god exists” and a further assumption “if the god described by classical theism exists”; divine command theory is the biggest hypothetical ever constructed. Now someone might say that “the moral argument proves god exists”, working backward from the existence of morality to the gods existence, but as demonstrated elsewhere, this argument is incredibly fallacious and question begging. Divine command theory relies upon our ignorance. If morality comes from the commands of an authority, we don’t need to understand why the action is the correct one. This is true for commands we would find ridiculous but find people happily doing in the Bible. Take for example the command for Abraham to kill his own son. He was happily going to do it, blindly obeying orders, not asking for justification. In fact, on divine command theory, it would be incredibly immoral for him not to do it. It was not until some Angel intervened, preventing the tragedy. But on this view of morality, that angel must be held reprehensible, since it prevented a direct command. This example illustrates a problem with divine command theory. It actually does not tell us why any specific thing is “good”, it shifts the problem. It is really saying “I don’t know what is or isn’t good, but this God is all good, and he commanded it so it must be good”. That chain of reasoning exemplifies the entire framework. It is entirely question begging; when reasons are asked why this unknowable, imperceptible, and invisible entity is the moral standard, we are normally given a “might makes right” argument. But notice we still don’t have a justification for what is good, we have no reasons establishing what is moral and distinguishing moral actions from immoral actions. When god gives a command, we don’t have any justification; we don’t know what the reasons are for it being good, just that it came from god and we assume god is good. This becomes very evident when we ask “why ought we follow that command”; we ought to follow that command because god has commanded us to follow that command, which has commanded us to follow that command, ad infinitum. I think this is why obedience to authority is stressed as much as it is in abrahamic religions. And also why it can be a problem. This godly authority is usually transferred to the head of house, the head of the local church, or some group leader. When a Christian child grows up, they are expected to obey adults (very specifically, Christian adults), without question. Obviously this is a spectrum, some families are less like this, but this is no doubt the standard by which everything else is based. A child is a pariah if they question a coach or teacher; obedience leads to the punishment of doubt. This is definitely one of the cultural by products of a meta ethical system that places no value on moral reasoning or moral discovery. More broadly, divine command theory says nothing about intrinsic moral goodness. Take for example something we mostly agree upon, it is intrinsically wrong to murder your child. If god commands you to do this, then this means there is no intrinsic harm in doing this. In fact, there is no intrinsic value of good actions either, because goodness essentially derives from following moral imperatives and commands, from the commander. That is what is good for people to do. It’s not that being kind to your neighbor is intrinsically good, it’s that being good is to follow gods rule which is to be kind to your neighbor. And even better, having reservations about doing the command means you are subversive, and that by definition is the worst thing on this paradigm, since you are not following the obligation/duty mindlessly. I had an epiphany. In the context of the “fall of man” some people wonder why god just didn’t create Eden without the forbidden tree to begin with, thus circumventing the problem. Or disallowing the serpent from being there, since this would also circumvent the problem. Or just granting Adam and Eve the knowledge of good and evil to begin with so they knew not to pick from the tree. There were obviously many other plausible scenarios god could have instantiated to avoid “the fall”. But this comes down to the very nature of divine command theory. The point of depicting morality this way, and god this way, is to value ignorance. God loves us in our ignorance, free from asking questions. Free from curiosity. Ultimate obedience. By punishing man kind in their purest form of ignorance, the message is that the only proper thing to do, regardless of the serpent or knowledge of good and evil, is to obey god 100 percent. He commanded it, Adam and Eve did not follow the commands for whatever reason that god could have prevented, and boom, punished. This is the essence of divine command. Shut up and do as you’re told, doing as you are told (following these moral commitments) is what makes you good. The utter irony of this narrative is that it is counterintuitive. God wants us to have faith (trust), but does not want to provide justification or have us questioning his reasons. He wants us as sheep. But when you actually trust someone, you feel comfortable asking them tough questions. This is when you feel most trusting, most vulnerable to the possible negative response. When you truly have a trusting relationship with a superior, you can question them. And they respond, non-aggressively, compassionately, without judgement. They don’t strike you down and punish you and every generation to follow. They don’t submit you to eternal torture.

I'll just finish this off with a quote from Thomas Paine that I think is relevant to this issue:

Revelation when applied to religion, means something communicated immediately from God to man. It is revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and, consequently, they are not obliged to believe it. It is a contradiction in terms and ideas to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication.

So far I've not been directly addressing the most common use of "Agnostic"; it's religious sense. I'll explain what I think of this sense of the word by means of analogy.

Agnosticism tends to associate itself with Atheism. Both are forms of irreligion, unbelief, or lack of religiosity. However, I think they are distinct; at least in the case of my agnosticism. They are distinct like Islam and Christianity; perhaps even more distinct upon further philosophical investigation. I will start by making an analogy, comparing religious agnosticism to someone who does not subscribe to any political ideology.

During one of my first lectures in undergraduate Macroeconomics we were posed a question: “In what ways is economics like a religion?” Naively, I said they were completely unalike. Economics tries its best to be self-reflective of its assumptions, tries to use models to describe and predict measurable outcomes, processes and mechanisms, conduct experiments to estimate counterfactual conditionals, formalize theories in mathematical terms where axioms are clearly stated, simulate a phenomenon when computationally when feasible, and generally tries to achieve falsifiability. Whether or not any individual practicing economist achieves this ideal standard is irrelevant. The profession lends itself to methods that are reflective, rigorous, non-authoritarian, and evidence based. Whether any individual economist confuses the map with the territory or is unwilling to let go of dubious prior assumptions is another question. Throughout the history of economic thought, we see “schools of thought”: Marxism, New Keynesian, Neo-Keynesian, New Classical, Austrian, Evolutionary, Santa Fe Complexity, Fresh Water, and many more. Whether or not these follow the “evolution” of scientific theories proposed by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is a philosophical debate I do not want to have. Any of these schools will disagree with methodology, to the extent that some are more philosophically driven while others try to replicate physical sciences. At any rate, if you look at the history of economic thought it seems to splinter and branch in a path similar to that of Christianity or any other religion for that matter. I did not fully realize this until I started studying Early Christianity. I changed my position; they are alike in trajectory and in many cases in the degree of dogmatism promoted by their adherents. They are still unalike in many aspects; in particular the methods used to ascertain truth, epistemic positions, processes by which the historical splintering unfolds (there have been no 30 year wars due to economic doctrines, but a long Cold War), and obvious differences like rituals and tradition, among many others. Nevertheless, this is my starting point for showing how being “politically” or “economically” agnostic sheds light on what it means to be religiously agnostic and how it is much different from strong-A atheism.

The main point I want to make is that among practicing economists, there really isn’t much of a distinction. We all generally agree that quantitative methods are superior, scientific methods should be strived for, and that a-priori we should approach the discipline with the absence of any political or economic ideology guiding the analysis. The approach calls for neutrality. If you come at it from a political perspective, state your assumptions and we can question them. I am not saying every economist will converge on truth; its clear enough that this is extremely difficult in the field. I just mean to contrast the practice of economics with economic ideologues, political pundits, and explicit partisans. The latter category of people are the ones I contrast myself against. They are the ones, when compared against, which I call myself an agnostic. The reason is simple: when collections of assumptions are unchallenged, slogans are regurgitated ad nauseum, group identity begins to form, and we can’t self-reflect on our base-line worldview, we are no longer in the field of economic analysis and are instead in the field of power, coercion, manipulation, control, fear mongering, and ridicule. We no longer speak of the economy as a thing that can be measured and understood, but as a thing that is “good” or “evil” and has existential consequences if not changed this instant. Of course there are instances where moral judgments intertwine with economic processes such as the slave trade. I am not saying that the two are mutually exclusive. What I am saying as that I believe there to be facts, laws, and theorems that can be known about the economy and that we need to focus on solving this calculus. I want to distinguish activism critical inquiry.

Some schools of thought have emerged in the past few hundred years. Of these schools, some are prominent, some have faded away, and some are emerging. I am an agnostic. I do not believe that any one school has it “right”, I do not believe that any school exclusively practices the best methods, but I do believe many of the schools have something to offer. I am not dogmatic about economics, I recognize that some of the assumptions underlying the models I take to be reliable may be incorrect. All models are wrong, some are useful. However, I am committed to the idea that in principle, something can be known of this thing we call “economy” and that better methods will be discovered in the future, but I am not an adherent of any school of thought. In Economics, I am agnostic in regard to economic ideologies and schools of thought, but still think there can be discoveries that shed light on this complex system. We may, with careful insight, be able to understand how human morality shapes economic ideologies and in what way these ideologies effect the system, and how the outcome of that process feeds back into the very system that produced it. There are ways we can fundamentally describe facts of the system, establish laws and regularities, and just maybe, help guide our decisions with evidence-based policy. A-priori, there is no “best” system. Some systems are better at achieving different goals, some remain theoretical and unreachable, some are complex, some are simple, some adapt, some are rigid, some are short lived while some are long lived. The vocabulary we choose to describe the construct of study can be sharpened.

Contrast this to my religious agnosticism. If we take any two Christians, they will most likely disagree with how to interpret scripture. A quick google search shows that there are roughly 45,000 denominations of Christianity alone. There are roughly 10,000 distinct religions word-wide. These numbers will obvious change depending on the definition of “religion” and “denomination”. The point is that there are a lot of differences. There are even more differences in religiosity, degree of commitment, and knowledge of scripture. This sounds a lot like political, economic, and social ideologies. These ideologies all feed into each other; certain religious faiths lend themselves more likely to certain economic ideologies. For example, usury laws in Islamic states. Economic ideology is strictly determined by religious faith. Or take a controversial example in Christianity; Sell your cloak and buy a sword. Many southern Baptists use this as justification for certain social ideologies surrounding gun laws. Among all of these differences, the question becomes: how have you established the differences, what ways are there for differences to be resolved, and what is your method for determining which denomination, sect, or religion is theologically correct. The answer is sort of in the question: there is no way of discerning because theology is necessarily metaphysical and speculative. There is no method that transcends all religion to establish facts about the supernatural. In principle, it is not even possible to establish knowledge about the entities, prophecies, myths, and supernatural claims espoused by most religions, and there is no way to resolve dissenting opinion between two religions or between two denominations within the same religion. If we think about all of the things we “know”, the methods used are universal. There are common methods that transcend all nations and cultures, can be independently verified and discovered, and have self-reflecting feedback mechanisms that redirect us towards knowledge. You cannot know anything in religion, you can only believe. I think this question was originally posed by John Stuart Mill or John Locke. How do we know if Christianity or Islam is correct? When you think about it, there really is no way of establishing which one is correct or incorrect. There are no truth-makers in religion; there is dogma, authority, and tradition. We can assess the outcomes of believing this-or-that in terms of secular moral standards, but when comparing the two, cannot show that one is right and another is wrong. Some theologians will claim that, one is more plausible then another, and make an inference to the best explanation as to the truth of one of the other. I vehemently disagree with this approach for reasons I cannot get started with here, but I can shorten it by saying; its not the best explanation of the facts, it is an unlikely explanation of many possible explanations of a subset of supposed facts. I think it is a more rational approach then what some fundamentalists do, but there is no decisive method that established the priority of one over another.

I am politically and economically agnostic because I do not think any economic ideology has a monopoly on truth, can single handily establish the truth, and tends towards dogmatism rather than open-ended inclusive inquiry. In the same sense, I do not think any religion or denomination has any monopoly on claims of the supernatural or metaphysical. I am still engaged in finding the truth in economics, because I think there exists methods for discovering and establishing knowledge about the economy. An “economy” is something that can be well-defined, measured, and understood. We are just not there yet and I am not sure when we will be there.

On the other hand, I am not engaged with religiosity at all, because I do not think there is any knowledge to be gained. “God” is poorly defined, we cannot even begin to understand what this would be; we can only speculate about its existence and properties. This comes way before any of the scriptural stories in monotheistic and polytheistic religions. Speculation is, by definition, not knowledge. Everyone is wrong, and there is no way for knowing who is right or even if there is a right answer or whether it is within the existing set of religions available to us today. In this sense, I am an agnostic politically, economically, and religiously except with the two former categories I think something can be known, and the latter category I am not sure if anything can be known. I should mention I do not believe in Revelation; I refer the reader to the DSM-5. In theology, you must presuppose the existence of a deity in order for the discipline to make sense. In economics, you must presuppose the existence of a system we call “economy” in order to study it. With the latter, it is something in principle, possible of being studied since it’s a structure that’s posited to exist within space and time. In the former, it is a metaphysical entity posited to exist, which is definitionally external to all of the methods we have to establish knowledge. When a theologian studies scripture, they have to presuppose it was written by God, in addition to the presupposition of Gods existence. Since I generally do not believe that standpoint epistemology is a valid way of acquiring knowledge, I shy away from “religious experience” as a means for knowledge acquisition especially when there are so many conflicting reports.

So how does this differ from Atheism, and why am I not a full-blown anti-religious bigot? Well, religious wisdom exists, people have found comfort in their quest to try answering the existential questions I think are unanswerable, and maybe one of them is “true”. These are all practical reasons and I think follows from agnosticism; just because I don’t think any of them can “prove” themselves to be true, or one closer to the truth than another, doesn’t mean they are all “false” in some global sense or that there isn’t any value in the practice. Closed mindedness is what annoys me; I think I just stay away from close-minded people in general because it runs so contrary to my inner nature. Many Atheists fall in this category; I think some tend to fall prey fundamentalist dogma of political ideologies. As for the religious, the more fundamentalist you become the more of a joke I make you out to be. It doesn’t anger me, as it does for some Atheists. There are counter-apologetic YouTube channels, which I enjoy, but will never create one myself because I do not care strongly to convert people from religion or to “stop the spread” or religiosity. The truth is, I do not have anything to fill the vacuum left open after someone is de-converted. I personally find it morally outrageous to think that de-converting someone from their faith will by default “make them a better person” and they can just move along without issue. It's not necessary that there should be some gap, but for those deeply immersed I'm sure it's one hell of a struggle for them. Atheism falls on the “claim to knowledge” spectrum. If you claim to know that there is no god or gods, you are an atheist. If you feel strongly about this, and believe your atheistic worldview is optimal and wish to spread it, you are an Evangelical Atheist. If you wish to prevent religion from being practiced, you are a militant Atheist. Relating this to the “economics analogy”; if you are Austrian libertarian and can have discussions about some of the blind spots in your position, that is fine. If you are an idiot who has never even read Carl Menger and want to blow up the Fed, that is not fine. If you are a Marxist who engages discussion with non-Marxists, fine. If you are a Bolshevik, not fine. If you cannot make any of the distinctions I have laid out in this post, you are the problem.

When someone asks why I am agnostic, I typically say “because I was not brought up in religion” despite having very reasonable objections to religious belief. It is easier to default to this answer because no one really want's to have these sorts of discussions; they tend to make people uncomfortable. There also tends to be a lot of ignoring and gaslighting. I think it is common to associate “religion” with “organized belief in God”. In the Central Valley of California where I am from, this means “Being Catholic or Protestant” given the demographics but Sikhism and Assyrian Orthodox Church's are common. I don't consider religiosity to be exclusive to Theistic belief, but rather broadly can be thought of as a system of worship where a collection of people with certain behaviors or customs, ethics, texts, prophecies, sacred scripture, morals, traditions etc. are common place, taken for granted, and are held with prestige and that there are in-group and out-group boundaries (typically the out-group are scene as heretical in some way). There tends to be a binary way of thinking about the out-group members vs in-group members, with clear delineations as to who belongs and who does not (despite having non-essential similarities). All of this has always been somewhat of a mystery to me. I've tended to shy away from dogma, everything ought to be subject to scrutiny. I may go so far to say that, being critical is a virtue and necessary for humans to employ (towards themselves) even if this means risking offending the in-group. It might even be fundamental for human development. I see the world as complex, not black and white. Of course, the religious person will agree on that, while simultaneously reverting to their pre-defined binary oppositional concepts that were handed down and never thoroughly questioned. I do not think there is some all encompassing unifying features of non-belief (other then the rejection of the Theistic assumption) that can define “disbelief” in some clear way. If something is not White that does not necessitate it is Black. There are more ways then one to rationally reject religious presuppositions: the relation is one-to-many not one-to-one. Non-believers do not share a belief in scripture, there is no unifying text that brings everyone together for worship, there really is no traditional events they share, the world view is not pre-defined by a set of commandments. Rather, the rejection of theism implies a sort of pluralism in belief; non-belief is necessarily non religious and heterogenous.

Of course you can find exceptions to any rule you are trying to establish. There are certainly Atheists who identify as Marxists, who can be fervent in their Zeal towards achieving the Revolution and bringing about the Marxist prophecy determined by internal contradictions of the capitalistic system. On my view these people are converging towards religiosity. But from a statistical point of view, if I condition on the variable “Atheist”, the only thing I can predict will be “lack of belief”. If I condition on “protestant theism”, there are certainly differences in denominations but at the core I can predict more features of their core tenets than predicting what any particular Atheist will believe. This is the entire point of religion anyway; there is a community with many fundamental beliefs that many people share. If you didn't have this there wouldn't be much of a religion.

Anyway, I would say many people who are labeled “Atheist” are not necessarily convinced with certainty in the absence of a God. Their conception of “God” probably differs, and doesn't fit into any of the pre-defined categories of the dominant Abrahamic religions. One example I can think of is Spinoza. But why stop there? I could not think there is an omni-everything God who watches over and spoke to Abraham, but that does not mean I am necessarily Atheist. If I do not acknowledge the current conceptualization of something, does that mean I reject it all together? For example, suppose I reject how we define “Intelligence”, does that mean I think there is no concept of intelligence or that the specific conceptualization is inaccurate? This is why there is a explosion in “religious but not affiliated” group; most likely because they cannot reconcile their experiences and the facts we have discovered about life over the past 400 years with the traditional conceptions of God. Personally, this is not my position, but you can imagine that this is someone's position somewhere. You could be a deist, their God “got the ball rolling” but then left the scene and never intended on humans developing as they are. There simply are many ways to conceive of God (or Gods) without resorting to the traditional view that was imposed upon us for centuries. But then again, if you do not share the conception, you are lumped into the Pagan group and are de-facto evil.

To say that Atheism/agnosticism is a “new” thing is also folly. Atheism goes back probably 1000 BC or even further. Epicurus and other ancient Greek thinkers, Ancient Eastern Philosophers (including the Six Heretical Teachers), the school of atomism (first formulation of science), Charvaka; I mean the examples are endless. I claim that many people who were non-believers or Pagans were simply coerced into modern Abrahamic systems. Descartes was to be very careful when formulating his thesis, as to not offend the Church (look what happened to Galileo) when he rejected Aristotelian “Science” (which is actually just another name for Teleology). Who would actually come out when the tyranny of the Monarch/Church was quick to kill heretics? Martin Luther was a firm believer, but the Church labeled him a heretic. Even disagreeing with scripture was potential for death. There is no surprise to me that, in a secular society where you are free to speak/think/criticize, less people will be frightened from expressing their true disbelief (despite the unfortunate fact of dealing with ostracization from your family if you come from a militantly religious family). The growing numbers of irreligious people should not be surprising. Agnosticism is the default position, and people are sick of hearing assertions of “where it all came from” when it doesn't correspond with their experience or world knowledge. Sure there are things which we cannot explain, but why assert in the absence of knowledge? That is only useful when the situation demands a decision be made because of some impending danger or deadline or something. You proceed in the absence of certainty on the presumption of that claim being true. Anyway, I am not here to make claims on behalf of others. I am here to explain my agnosticism because their appears to be significant misunderstanding (intentional probably) from certain communities (Atheists included). The irony behind all of this is that the Abrahamic religions are typically littered with Neoplatonic and Aristotelian thought. Nicomachean Ethics is arguably everywhere in Christian Ethics. To say that, the only way to think through deeper metaphysical questions is through a divine theistic lens, completely ignores what philosophers and humans have been doing for thousands of years in the absence of any specific religious world view. It also ignores the incredible reliance of the early Church on Greco-Roman thought (among other Pagan views). Why cant an agnostic rigorously ponder morals and follow whatever is discovered?

To explain my agnosticism as “not growing up religious”, says very little but also says a lot. It shows that, your world view is partially an artifact of the conditioning you had as a child (or the lack of conditioning). This bears the data; If you grow up in a certain geographical region you are likely to share the same religious perspective as the dominant group (Sikhs, Hindu, Muslim, Christian, etc.) what are the odds that I rationally accept Islam if I grow up in rural Appalachia? The rationalizations for any particular religion are always post-hoc. A person takes part in the traditions and customs, reads the scriptures, engages with the community, excludes out-group members or anyone who challenges the dogma (or even questions it actually), and later comes to learn mechanisms to justify their stance. Can we actually imagine a 5 year old picking up the Quran on sound rational basis over the Bible if they live in Texas? Certain truths are accepted and never questioned in the community. In some communities, specific interpretations of the scripture are rigidly imposed; and if you disagree that is heretical. You may learn to be critical, but it is always of the out-group members. Almost necessarily, the depictions of the out-group are straw-mans, smeared, or described in a way to instill some sort of fear or repulsion. Of course this doesn't apply to everyone. There are many religious communities that engage with outsiders but are still reserved; but clearly there is a demarcation otherwise there would be no distinction between the in-group and out-group. Not growing up in a specific religion, however, means that you have the choice to explore alternative world views, are encouraged to interact with opposing views, taught conflict resolution (possibly) with respect to differing world views. You are not bound to a specific scripture, or even a specific theological interpretation of the scripture. I think most people growing up in these non-religious communities are curious about questions of God (or whatever lies beyond the universe). Many people don't grow up with belief, but then form one. Many people grow up with belief, then reject it (in many cases after being vehemently fundamentalist). For me, I am curious about these conversion cases because they speak louder then anyone entrenched on the extreme. Studying boundaries and edge cases can be quite revealing of any system or process. If you do not grow up with belief, and approach it later in life as a young adult, you are approaching it in a radically different (much more critical) way. The thing is, your first words aren't “Jesus” or “Muhammad”. You know of them, and are curious, but when you pick up the book you judge it in accordance with however else you would critically judge an ancient ambiguous text. You do not take “revelation” and “miracles” as a fact of life, you are more skeptical of those claims, regardless of the tradition. You do not ex-post justify a rare event as “God”, or rationalize an event with a hybrid “this was the natural explanation but God willed it”. All religious claims are now on equal footing with other extraordinary claims, and shall be rigorously examined according to the best possible standards of truth. We are less quick to label something as God, and will be tolerant of ambiguity if there isn't an obvious explanation on the offset. “I don't know” is an acceptable answer in the face of genuine uncertainty. There less privileging of the local religion you grew up around when evaluating world religions; although I still find myself being partial to Christianity.

What more can I say about my Agnosticism? Well, I guess I can give specific examples as to how I'd evaluate a major religion. Here are some thoughts I've had over the short duration being exposed to a religious subculture:

1. Biblical Literalism and Reliability

Reliability is a spectrum; a gradable concept. Reliability is a function of the necessity for the object to perform under all or most circumstances (or whatever specified by the user). In an engineering setting, if a reliability engineer determines that the likelihood of failure for a lightbulb is 1%, we typically do not care: it’s more or less reliable for our purposes. If it’s a nuclear reactor, we want higher degree of reliability. If the reliability of a reactor was 1%, we would tend to care a bit more. In the first case we say the lightbulb is generally reliable, in the second case the reactor is unreliable because of the possible consequences; operating the reactor could lead to catastrophe. Reliability is tied to risk, and the reliance you place on a thing depends on what your use case. An electrical grid with 95% success rate is unreliable, because if you depend on the grid to operate for all applications, 5% of the time you won’t be able to do your task.

If we think of reliability in these terms; let us pose the question “are the gospels reliable for believing X and subsequently acting upon novel situations under the assumptions of its veracity?” Understood this way, the question is something along the lines of “do the facts claimed in the gospels serve as a reliable basis for framing my entire life and decisions” . If you accept them as reliable, the change is substantial. Similar to the nuclear reactor analogy, it is existential in that it frames your life trajectory (unlike the light bulb situation).

Put in these terms I would say that anything below a fine threshold of error would be enough to deem it unreliable, purely on the basis of the long term life changing risk associated with every decision you make being framed by the world view. Inerrancy means infallibility. Biblical infallibility is the belief that the Bible is completely trustworthy as a guide to salvation and will not fail to accomplish its purpose. The key word is purpose. Similar to a product of manufacturing, it’s purpose or use case is what is relevant. Put in another way: if you have a complex recipe for creating a delicious dinner but it’s missing steps or the step is unclear about what decision to make, at some point you cannot rely on the recipe for its intended goal.

Infallible means something is incapable of mistake or error. If you have a system, document, or anything else, and find an error, it is fallible and therefore not inerrant. Inerrancy does not mean unreliable, someone might claim; but there is a bit of Sorites paradox assumed within that response and it is deliberately skeptical: “there is actually no way to determine the reliability because it’s a fuzzy concept”. We have already found that it’s fallible, meaning not 100% reliable; but the assumption is that you cannot find a point on the spectrum for when it becomes unreliable therefore we have to shift to an alternative method for determining reliability. Which leads to the "major claim, intermediate claim, minor claim" distinction you will see in apologetics, which is arbitrary to a degree. If you are unfamiliar with this, it is the tactic to dismiss inerrancies as irrelevant because they are "not the main point". But what constitutes a major claim? Does major claim mean that it’s highly relevant? If so, what is the criteria for identifying one set of claims as more relevant then another? It seems we are shifting the problem. “We can verify the major claims and ignore details that are irrelevant", they say, but how many times have investigators overlooked something which was once deemed irrelevant but upon further inspection find that it’s highly relevant? It seems that establishing one subset of scripture as more relevant than another subset relies upon specific theological presumptions that are obviously not agreed upon generally.

If the recipe for a dish is fallible to some degree, you can’t trust it as a guide. In the alternative case, you can trust it to a degree but not with complete certainty and must interpolate to the best of your ability. Maybe you can find another source, but what if the degree of difference between the two is sufficient enough for you to be indeterminate about what to do? Intra-source it is indeterminate and extra-source it could be contradictory. Now you may move forward with the recipe on the basis that it doesn’t really matter, you are experimenting, or you are in dire need of food and will adjust as best you can, but in the case of something major like a nuclear reactor you’ve got to be sure of the reliability. In the former case, cooking a dish is not important compared to the latter. I wouldn't imagine a Christian saying it doesn’t really matter if their bedrock assumptions aren't backed by the Bible. They would probably put it on the same level of importance as that of our nuclear reactor example. Which, if this is the case, would mean that any degree of fallibility would be sufficient to reject it as reliable.

I would also say that if this standard of acceptance were applied to other situations we experience day-to-day, it would lead to us accepting all sorts of phenomenally unusual claims. What Bart Ehrman says about biblical dates of authorship, oral transmission, and the inconsistencies, can be applied to any legal trial involving witness testimony, gossip at the office, hear say about a person etc. Let’s just say you had 4 people tell you something that happened ~30 years earlier, and all 4 of them were inconsistent and you had no other reason for acceptance other then their word. I am guessing people people would be hesitant, or agnostic to accept anything on the basis of their inconsistencies. If we begin pre-specifying what is important as an evasion mechanism, then what prevents anyone else from employing this tactic for any other bizarre claim? How can we discern when to consider the "gist" versus specific details, or literal versus non-literal?

2. Testimonial Reliability and Degree of Belief

Suppose something happened, and I have testimony claiming that certain aspects and features of the events unfolding are true. Let’s suppose I have a child who, has gotten in trouble at school, and claims to be a victim of some punishment they’re not guilty for. Or suppose I am an administrator, seeking to know what happened on the school yard while I had my back turned and couldn’t see what transpired. When I go to collect my information, I will likely have in the back of my mind, questions of reliability in terms of the statements being made by various people. I may also ask whether someone was in a position to observe the events, or if they heard from someone else. I may question the reliability of the description of the particular facts that have been reported; for example if someone has claimed something so contrary to normal circumstances.

This is the situation we find ourselves in when we ask certain questions about events that are claimed to be historical reports found in the Bible regarding Jesus life, trial, punishment etc. Suppose I proceed to address the situation like any other event needing explanation, I immediately encounter that the same criticisms apply. What were the motivations of the authors describing the events? We’re they in position to receive the facts or were they told by someone else? If told by someone else what is their credibility and degree of trustworthiness? How can I validate trustworthiness of something based on anonymous testimony a long time ago? Are facts embellished in any way and how can I verify the degree of accuracy? Someone may respond simply by saying, the Bible authors are trustworthy. But on what basis do we get to claim, that the authors are trustworthy?

If I am investigating events in modern times and ask anyone about the events that transpired, most would be skeptical of the claims and apply this rigor. Can I trust person X? Well what are my reasons for trusting person X? Maybe they have demonstrated reliability in the past, maybe we know there aren’t any conflicting motives, maybe we know it is physical possibility for them to be in a position to know, maybe they have specific traits that allow them to be demonstrably reliable. The point is that there is a set of criterion that we apply and if they pass then we can accept the testimony as possibly true provided it’s consistent with other sources. Depending on what the stakes are, we may have a higher bar for acceptance.

Now, what are the criterion we apply or don’t apply when trying to discern if the biblical events are probable or even possible? If we say "that so and so is reliable", what is our basis? It surely, can’t be the fact that they merely exist as a character in the Bible. Their authority cannot derive from the fact that the Bible says they are reliable, because that’s exactly what we are attempting to discern. For example, suppose any event happened, maybe a bank robbing. We have a suspect, who says “I am innocent and I am reliable”, we cannot just accept that as the justification. But the logic mirrors this precisely in terms of biblical reliability. The Bible cannot be reliable because it says it’s reliable or we believe it to be reliable based on our theological assumptions that derive from accepting the Bible. This is self referential and not how we should try to approach discovering truth or factual assertions. In any other case, we appeal to directly relevant corroborating evidence independent from the source, or look for features about the story that make it possible or impossible to have had happened based on other known facts (think about if we accuse someone of murder. The murdered claims innocence, we presume their innocence under reasonable doubt, but if there is no alibis or if a feature about the story is directly contradictory to something else known).

The basic idea is that we should not lower our standards for more exceptional claims. I may be willing to look past minor claims like, someone at work at my sandwich. But if a claim leads to the adoption of a life changing set of practices and commitments, the burden of proof should be significant. In fact, there should be no room for “belief”. I don’t “believe that” 2+2=4. It’s proved. It would be silly to say that “I believe it and it’s true, or I believe it because it’s true, and definitely not it’s true because I believe it”. It is demonstrated. Belief has no basis, there is no room for doubt , it is certain. Especially if the "payoff" is not within this life.

3. The very concept of “Omnipotence” and “Transcendence”: How to be "Beyond Everything"?

Consider a few principle axis’ of physical reality: space, time, matter, and energy (ignoring strong/weak nuclear force, quantum mechanics, electromagnetism, gravity, dark matter, dark energy for simplicity). All thought, action, facts, states of affairs, events, objects, particulars etc. exist in one or many of these at once. Even immaterial thoughts, mental states exist within time. Immaterial things can be within the physical universe; consider information as existing and effecting things around us but being immaterial. “Nothing” is fundamentally inconceivable, even a vacuum contains one of these fundamentals, or is contained in one of these. To think of anything, the content of the thought must be situated in one of the axis. It is fundamentally a contradiction, or misunderstanding of these fundamentals, to say that something can be “beyond” any of these because the “stuff” within the conceptualization of the thing has to be within one or contain some of these states. To say that something is “meta” physical, or beyond the physical universe, seems necessarily speculative on the basis that our methods for acquiring knowledge are limited to the physical. Revelation can’t be a legitimate source of knowledge; even if a person is convinced of the message. Revelation can be accounted for on the basis of something within the physical universe. This must be explored first before you go beyond to a metaphysical explanation. Something that is “revealed” to someone must manifest itself physically somehow, and then be interpreted. You have to be able to eliminate alternative explanations or account for why it isn’t a revelation, and then demonstrate it to others somehow. Typically this is done by repeated experimentation in the sciences. But this repetition cannot be done with revelation and there is no way to validate the experience. But the main point I am trying to make here is that it is fundamentally impossible to conceive of anything that is "beyond" the fundamental components of our experience which are all physical.

To say that something was revealed just mean that it was presented within the only domain of experience we have access to: the physical. But how did the revealer reveal the message? They would have to intervene; meaning that there is another realm (metaphysical) beyond the current one, that doesn’t have the same properties as this one, but is subjugated to it and can interact with it. Something has to be able to "reach in" and reveal. But the key here is the some ”thing” . A thing is simplify an object or an entity that doesn’t have a name. Things have properties. Objects have subjects, the ones who are the subject of observation of the thing and it’s properties. We may or may not be able to observe all of the properties of the thing. And entity is a bit broader as it encompasses both subject and object. Some believe there are supernatural entities. Supernatural means to supervene the natural world; they exist beyond all of the axis I listed above. Every entity we know, we can know by means of detecting it within one of the axis of physical universe. A pen exist at a position for an amount of time. Even a thought exists somewhere, if we can’t determine where we can know when it occurred. This is something immaterial that is still located within the physical domain. We can know by simply seeing or measuring an entity. We can then reason about the entities. We can also reason about the existence of an entity before having observed it. Venus was reasoned for mathematically and then empirically verified later after telescopes improved. The key feature of Venus though, is that it’s existence was not know but still must have existed within the physical domain. We can speculate about the existence of an entity or object but it’s always situated within our immediate experience. Notice that; if something supervenes all of the axis, we can’t empirically verify it or reason sensibly about it, because we can only reason sensibly about something that is within the domain of our experience. This is why “nothing” is incomprehensible; you simply cannot conceive of absolute nothingness, therefore you cannot speak sensibly about it. “Nothing” means, none of the axis are available for us to latch our reason and experience to. Something that supervenes everything has to fall in this category; making it necessarily speculative and incomprehensible. “Beyond the physics” is neither provable or probable, right or wrong, true or untrue, falsifiable or verifiable: you accept or not on the basis of persuasiveness.

Where does a “word” exist? Why do words convey meaning? Two questions; and two different answers will follow. A word exists as a physical auditory frequency that represent mental imagery or convey orders, express thoughts, or whatever. They can be transcribed on a page. They travel through physical channels, your ears come to hear them and your brain has a processor that decodes and encodes, or compiles it into something understandable. When you read the word, your brain associates the symbols with its referent. Both methods evoke mental imagery, in which we make sense of words and determine it’s meaning. Why do words convey meaning? I don’t know. But a word is a vessel used to transmit communication between sentient beings. Its physical basis is in the form of a signal, which can be measured.

Does god exist? Well if you say that “this cannot be it” and you are convinced of that then sure he exists. But you can also say “this can’t be all there is” and remain completely neutral on any metaphysical doctrine because you are not persuaded of the plausibility of it. Plausibility does not have a truth maker. It is inherently tied to persuasiveness. There are many conceptions of god that differ; primarily because we are now operating in the speculative realm and cannot actually define what it is. Many other concepts have this problem . If you do not accept revelation as a way of knowledge, then it’s difficult to accept some of the supernatural claims in any major religious doctrines . But this also begs the question for the believer: since all revelation cannot be true (not all religions are valid) on what basis can you decide which revelation is the true revelation? Many theists reject the claims of religions that are not their own, much like an agnostic. Revelations that other prophets have had outside of Islam are considered heretical and false. What is their basis for knowing it is false since they do not reject revelation outright? What is the mechanism for discerning which revelations or miracles are considered legitimate while others are heretical?

The question is a bit deeper though. What can exist outside of any of the physical domains but not be verifiable is irrelevant in a sense. I can create a completely fictitious story with characters who have never existed, to demonstrate a concept or idea. The entire story must have elements or features that exist within the principle axis I've listed above. “A long time ago in a galaxy far far away” for example or “in the beginning”, the scene is set. I cannot say “in a place beyond the physical realm” because “place” is a particular point in space and time, or a portion of area used for some purpose: it’s a contradictory in terms to say a place beyond a location. Does this mean that the sentence lacks meaning? Absolutely not. It is poetic; it evokes imagery of transcendence but is completely unverifiable. Meaning is quite different then verifiability; which is why mechanistic explanation is devoid of life lessons or depth. Finding out “how” something works is immensely rewarding and eye opening, but the “why” question is what gives meaning. The problem is that “why” language is inherently poetic, and people cannot make the distinction between these two types of questions. Or the problem is when one overlaps in the others domain a bit too much.

Where does a “story” exist? No where. It has to be anchored in terms that are comprehensible to us; it has to be situated within the principle axis of our understanding. But it does not have to be verifiable. Elements of it can be verified but can also be legendary. Take the example of historical knowledge; we often “tell stories” of the past. But stories of the past versus the historicity of the past is obviously different. When something happened to me last week and I say “let me tell you this story about what happened” , a simple reporting of facts is not what I do. I tell a story. It is not false to leave out details of a story or emphasize certain motifs in the story; because I am not giving a historical account of what happened during the time. I am not laying out a chronological list of events with cause and effect explanations. If I am telling a story, there is ultimately a point, or goal or objective, or some principle I want to demonstrate. Maybe it’s just comedic. Maybe I am describing it in a way that shows a struggle I had to overcome. Maybe I want to demonstrate a higher principle of justice. Maybe the whole thing was made up and I’m a compulsive liar. The point of this, is to show that the word “story” has many meanings and operates in our lives on a fundamentally deep level. People are story tellers, they always have been and always will. Historical explanation, historicity, is not what we do when recalling events of the past (depending on the situation of course) . Stories can be embellished, they can evoke mental imagery to motivate you, they cause passion in the heart, they speak to us.

This is where there are problems: when story/myth intertwine with historicity. Historicity is inherently scientific explanation. You are not telling a story. But elements of a story can contain claims to historical fact that can be verified or falsified. If I’m telling a story to my friends about something cool, I am likely to jazz it up. Maybe it is factually correct that I gave the precise location of where this cool thing happened. But what if the main thrust of the story is that I fought off 10 big dudes with my bare hands? The fact that I told them where it occurred and that this place can be verified doesn’t make the story a historical account. I need to verify the claim that I fought 10 big dudes with my bare hands. Because the point of the story is to demonstrate my power or something grand about myself. Location information doesn’t corroborate the story. If I got the location wrong, that doesn’t necessarily work against the story, because I could have fought 10 big dudes somewhere else but have been wrong about the location. A historical account would have to check if 10 men who were also big who were in the same location at once who were also attacking you were fended off without the need for additional support or weapons. You have to show that the dudes didn’t run off because they heard sirens, or were spooked by something else. You have to show that your knuckles are bruised from punching them. If you are a scrawny little dude, it probably doesn’t seem plausible unless we know that you know martial arts or something. Maybe you told me a story beforehand that you’ve had experience fighting off gangs of dudes. That auxiliary story accounts for the plausibility claim, but does not prove the actual claim. If I can’t get access to any of the ten dudes or other details, I simply cannot know the historicity of the claim. I cannot prove it right or wrong. Take your pick. BUT the whole point of the story telling is because the story teller wants you to know something. Maybe in this case the kid wants you to know he is capable of fighting. Stories have motifs. Sometimes they can be demonstrated historically, sometimes they can’t. Sometimes stories have no bearing on historicity; they openly maintain that it is fictitious, like Star Wars or something. Would we say that Star Wars is “false” or not “historically accurate “ because it claims to have happened a long time ago? Does that mean the motifs in the story are false? Absolutely not. This is completely a different matter of discussion. Does a story not motivate people to do great things or be inspired based on the message, even if it's technically speaking false? A story situated in history, or some place within the principle axis, that cannot be historically verified, does not lose its significance because of this; story tellers are not library technicians, they are poets who want to move you to action.

4. Change Implies Time

This one comes from the idea that an omnipotent entity can be immutable while also somehow acting on the world. The entity lives "external to time" I am told. But If there was no time, then change simply cannot occur. However, the inverse relation does not hold; if there was no change, that does not imply there is no time. Change means, a state of affairs has underwent a process, there was some sort of event which happened such that properties of the thing undergone a transformation which must occur within time. At time 1, it was X, at time 2 it was Y. Some “thing” went under a process of “becoming” which implies a process was instantiated and had a duration. Even an instantaneous process has a time, albeit close to zero. Change implies transitioning from one point in state space to another; implying an occurrence in time.

A thing which is timeless, spaceless, and changeless performing the “act of creation” must be a contradiction. Creation implies process, which means change. A change occurring outside of time is a contradiction, since change implies time. We simply cannot conceive of a timeless change similar to how we cannot conceive of a square circle.

If I “create” something, my current state of affairs must be altered in order to actuate the change of state. Alteration implies change, or a difference between two states of affairs. The properties of my being have been altered to accommodate the state transition, and a new relation has emerged. Nothing can be changeless, as that contradicts the notion of “creation”, because “creating” is a verb, something that is done, which implies time.

5. Every Theological Interpretation of Scripture relies on resources external to the text itself: Why you cant "just read your Bible"

If I “just read the bible” I immediately come to a halt when I see the words “let there be light” in Genesis I. We live on a planet. Planets cannot form without stars. Stars emit light. The form of the Earth cannot exist without the elements provided from the sun, which implies light came before the earth was formed. It is a physically false claim. This is not to mention the conflicting accounts in Genesis 1 and Genesis2. If I just read the bible, I come across this and think:

P1. If there are demonstrably false/inaccurate claims, claims that run contrary to known facts, or discrepancies in this document. I will need additional support in order to accept the document, or to be able to act on it.

(This does not seem controversial. If I receive a document from my manager with inconsistencies, vagueness, ambiguities, outright false claims etc. the most prudent thing to do would probably be to not act on the document or accept it)

P2. If the additional support is in a form contrary to accepted standards, uses a method that conflicts with standard methods of knowledge generation, or is in a way misleading or misguided by ideology, I should not accept it as supporting evidence.

P3. P1 holds true of document X, so I need to look for additional support Y

P4. Additional support Y is not fulfilled by requirement set in P2.

C. I should not accept the document or act on its behalf

This seems like a simple rule of thumb that anyone would apply to all sorts of documents that are troublesome.

“That part of the bible is meant to be allegorical/parable or an exemplification of some idea X” may typically be the response. I can accept this, with limits however. If we take “parts” of the bible to be allegorical and other parts to be literal, what method is there to discern which should be treated as allegorical or literal? I can’t think of a way to demarcate the boundary in some non-arbitrary manner. Suppose I hear the claim “Jesus rose from the dead”, am I supposed to take that literally? Assume we can define each term in that sentence unambiguously and apply some verification principle or subject it to other empirical methods, it would seem this is at best inconclusive and at most completely absurd; not to mention it goes against every common sense notion we have about factual reality. If I take it as allegory, what am I to do with it?

P1. Document D needs to be analyzed to discern its truth value in terms of correspondence to facts and evidence
P2. You cannot subject claim X to some portion of document D to some standard S
P3. You subjected claim X to standard S
C. Your conclusion about the veracity is misguided

But what are the rules of engagement? Why is Matthew 16:27–28 not to be taken literally, but other verses are? It seems like special pleading.

If the document is to be read allegorically, then we encounter the following components: Character, plot, setting, theme, style, structure, form, genre, narration, tense, and aspect. I now need to interpret it, while keeping these concepts in mind. This is called Exegesis (or hermeneutics for the philosophically minded people). The methods we apply to the Allegory of the Cave, for example, could be useful when interpreting some of Jesus’s parables. Other interpretive methods from the legal discipline may be of use. More broadly, anything from literary theory can be used. We would need to be critical of the rhetorical methods being used. Now we run into questions such as “What could sentence S be referring to? In what sense does Paul imply X?”. There could be infinitely many interpretations, some of which conflicting. The reading of the Bible becomes incredibly complex and if we want to discern any meaning from it we should probably consider many of them. So it seems like “just reading your bible” is a bit more nuanced then that. We may need to refer to "expert" interpreters in order to discern meaning. Then we ask, what techniques are they using? Where did they come up with these techniques?

Legal documents are a good analogy. Lets look at some of the methods here. Statutory interpretation can be mind-opening; seeing how different interpretive methods lead to different rulings. The difference however, is that facts are not represented in an allegorical way, but in a chronological way, substantiated by expertise or forensics and guided by very strict procedural rules. We are determining case-in-fact, not scriptural interpretation. Reading Four Senses of Scripture can give a nice introduction to how people approach interpretation in biblical studies but the main take away is that the results will be indeterminate as they are in the legal case. They require judgment, and in many cases rigorous knowledge of the subject content and interpretive methods are required for conflicts to be resolved. Furthermore, in contrast with jurisprudence, we are not dealing with anything concrete.

The bible is a collection of books, poems, notes, letters etc. Each gives some insight into the life of Jesus. Each, with differing literary style (figures of speech, parables, narratives, allegories, fables, personifications, motifs) depending on the hermeneutical stance of the reader. In essence, we are looking at a collection of fragmented documents that are potentially parables or legends. Interpreting scripture relies upon mental abstractions, interpretation techniques, linguistic analysis, conceptualizations, questionable definitions, a community reinforcing the interpretation, rhetorical strategies, philosophical doctrines/movements, and sources ultimately external to the text. Interpretative stances can come from a variety of possible sources; and this evolves. Some examples:

Diagrammatical reasoning to interpret scripture. This is hallmark of modern physical sciences, economics, and engineering disciplines: J-Curve in finance and the Biblical J Curve
Directional reasoning: Invoking notions of directional change to illustrate the meaning of scripture. Reversal Theory and The God of Reversals
Hegelian Dialectic: Dialectical Theology, Karl Barth, Must Catholics hate Hegel?, Interpretation and the Bible: The Dialectic of Concept and Content in Interpretative Practice, Theologian of synthesis: the dialectical method of Martin Luther King, Jr. as revealed in his critical thinking on theology, history, and ethics
The Permanent Influence of Neoplatonism upon Christianity, Neoplatonism and Christian Iconography
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and Neoplatonic Influences in Augustine Confessions
Scholasticism

Interpretation seems dependent on the ability of a person to form analogies and their access to philosophical literature from the Hellenistic Greco Roman world. The early Church fathers did this and we continue to do it.

6. Pascal's Wager: What does an Agnostic think?

This wager only seems reasonable (to some) because of its implicit (unfounded) assumptions. Take these assumptions away and you'll see this wager is simply not worth playing. In particular this wager assumes that...

There's only a choice between believing in the Christian God and not. This ignores many religious beliefs including incompatible branches of Christianity. When you remove this assumption, your odds of winning are greatly reduced.
One needs only to assert a belief. This ignores the cost of adopting a religion. When you remove this assumption, you realize that you have much to lose by adopting a religion, such as the opportunity cost of living life as you see fit.
The choice is between heaven and hell. This ignores the range of reward/punishment existing in religions -- even within the spectrum of Christian belief. When you remove this assumption you'll see that the reward/punishment structure of the wager is not so grim.

Looking at the above, this may be better looked at as an economic or game theoretic problem. Try to calculate the utility or pay-off for this wager. I'm not saying you can, but the attempt to do so should build a greater appreciation for the grossly oversimplified nature of this wager.

The determining factor is not how strongly you are convinced that knowledge of God's existence is possible or impossible, but rather the extent to which you are convinced that belief in God would be beneficial in the case that God exists. It's all about the value you place on belief, not the probability you assign to that belief being correct. In the classic version of Pascal's wager, it's assumed that there is no substantive cost to believing-if-wrong, and infinite gain to believing-if-right. If we can accept that as given, believing is the right choice no matter what probability we assign to the outcomes. If you think that belief is always positive, even if wrong (for instance, social and mental benefits), the math becomes even simpler. On the other hand, if you perceive a negative value to believing-if-wrong then the probabilities do come into play. To take it through to the extreme, if you feel believing is negative, even if correct, then the wager becomes a sure loss.

In summary, the probabilities become important only in the case where we can confidently assign a positive value to belief-if-correct and a negative value to belief-if-wrong. In all other cases the decision about valuating the outcomes dominates.

7. Implications of the Free Will Defense

It is typically said that the logical problem of evil is answered by the free will defense: it is not logically incoherent for a tri-Omni-god to exist while evil pain or suffering exists. People can do this by their own volition. I think this does alleviate the issue to an extent but doesn’t do away with the evidential problem. Nevertheless, it implies something very peculiar. If God does not want to interfere with our free will, and hence does not have to answer to evil , he equally cannot answer for miraculous benefits or positive outcomes, by the same logic of free will. It’s stated that some people are blessed, or that god does great things for people. Many times, these things are done by the free will of others for countless reasons, the possibility for positive outcomes exist for a variety of reasons (economical, knowledge advancement, access to education etc.). Is it not equivalent to say that, god does not answer for these good things precisely in the same way he does not answer for evil: on behalf of our free will and ability to manipulate the environment for our gain and the gain of others? It seems we relegate gods existence to that of deism; rarely involved and much of the moral good or bad we experience can be accounted for purely on human terms.

8. Archaeological reasoning: "The Shroud of Turin"

The shroud of Turin is one of the most widely studied artifacts. It allegedly contains the image of Jesus imprinted in the cloth, and might be the burial cloth referenced in the Bible.

There has been a great deal of debate around whether it is a hoax. The image was originally dated to the 1300’s using C-14 dating, but was subsequently revised using wide angle x ray scattering to the time shortly after the crucifixion.

Shortly following this, proponents of its authenticity have claimed this as a win for biblical archaeology. Websites like this really believe that this finding somehow qualifies as evidence in favor of the resurrection. This puzzles me, for a few obvious reasons that seemed to be overlooked.

To begin, the presumption that this is Jesus seems ridiculous. Even if we grant that this object dates to the time following the burial, it does not follow that this is evidence of the burial. The main reason is that no one actually knows what Jesus looked like. The depictions we have of him came centuries after his death. Furthermore, there is very sparse details in the Bible describing his physical appearance.

Exodus 20: “you shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.”

This passage explains why there is no description. Having an image of Jesus could lead to idolatry. Orthodox Church fathers in early Christianity forbade creating depictions. Our modern image is not based in any way, on historical fact. This is probably why (like in 21 jump street) there is a Korean Jesus. In every era, culture, and country he is depicted differently. There are commonalities but none of them are grounded in fact. In actuality, we know nothing about his before his ministry. We don’t even know what he could have possibly looked like based on parental descriptions because, we don’t have descriptions of them.

We unfortunately don’t know what he looks like and many Christian’s admit this Even in standard apologetics websites. The question is, why do some people think this could be Jesus, given that we literally don’t know what he looks like? There is likely an ethnocentric bias lurking in the shadows. This article shows what he could have possibly looked like based on forensic anthropology, and gives some historical background. The Wikipedia page also gives a cool history of racial depictions. This page somewhat mocks the attempts to reconstruct his physical appearance, but I’m sure they don’t mock experts who employ these same techniques when creating depictions of criminal suspects.

It seems like on a biblical basis, and purely rational common sense basis, this could be anyone. The logic goes like this:

We have images of Jesus we crafted ourselves. We found an artifact with a face imprinted on it resembling our conception of Jesus that is not based in anyway on fact. Therefore, this is evidence for the resurrection.

Even John Calvin wrote

How is it possible that those sacred historians, who carefully related all the miracles that took place at Christ’s death, should have omitted to mention one so remarkable as the likeness of the body of our Lord remaining on its wrapping sheet? — Treatise on Relics

So that is the first bit of information that is confusing me: we don’t even know what he looked like and we jump to a conclusion that this is somehow evidence for biblical events because the person on here “looks like Jesus”?

Second point: it seems like the rational wiki page is the only source that mentions this. Even if this dates to the time, it literally could be anyone crucified and buried. There is no reason to presume that it was Jesus. In fact, there is no reason to presume that the person wrapped in the sheet died of crucifixion. These are leaps in logic. All this tells us is that someone from that era died and was wrapped in a sheet.

Third point: it is impossible to even verify who the person could be. There is no way to cross reference the DNA on this sheet to anyone at the time without some sort of identifying DNA to compare it to. There is no way to tell who’s blood that is. It’s quite a jump to say it is Jesus, when we don’t have any samples from him, and don’t even know what he looked like.

Fourth point: there is no evidence indicating that this was ever in the possession of any character in the Bible. I presume, this cloth was used very often in Judea by many people for burial ceremonies. But it’s quite a leap to say that this one was the one being handled in Jesus’s burial.

Fifth point: given the patterns lack of definitive description, many individuals at the time could be fitted to the general pattern in the negative image.

Now I’m not trying to debunk anything, I just get very agitated by apologetics who claim they are using the structure of an unbiased evidence searching investigator but can’t even mention the aforementioned concerns I came up with in about 20 minutes. In particular, this quote from patterns of evidence really annoyed me:

There are so many “dots” arising from the study of the Shroud of Turin. That they form a pattern is difficult to deny. No one should place all their faith in the Resurrection of Jesus on this cloth alone. But as Norm Geisler said when he titled his book: I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist. It takes a dogmatic faith in skepticism, against the great preponderance of evidence, to dismiss the Shroud of Turin.

I don’t think they understand that many people don’t deny the Shroud of Turin; it had to go through rigorous testing to verify it wasn’t a hoax. This is expected and common of any rigorous investigation; it is not “dogmatic faith in skepticism” to subject a presumed spiritual relic to the same standards we would for any other object. You don’t need to start throwing around slander because you have a vested interested and feel personally attacked when the credibility of the object is at question. No, the real reason is what I mentioned above. Even if the shroud of Turin is dated to the time following Jesus death, it does not matter, because this isn’t even evidence in favor of anything biblical. It is entirely irrelevant to the biblical story. There is nothing connecting it to the events of the Bible. There is a faint image in a sheet from the time of Jesus which resembles our man-made depiction of Jesus, which is not based in historical fact.

It is entirely relevant to any sort of “bigger picture of patterns” because no one has provided any arguments or evidence in favor of its relevance. It’s an object that people assume to be evidence in favor of their dogmatic faith in Jesus. This is not even an application of skepticism, it is an application of common sense and unmotivated reasonings. Now, if you can provide evidence that this could be Jesus, or could rule out the possibility of it being someone else, then I would listen. But you can’t, because we don’t even know what he looked like or have any DNA or anything linking him to this piece of cloth. At the very least, maybe this provides a motivation for more discovery. At the very best, it is entirely irrelevant as evidence in favor of a biblical narrative.

9. Dismissing inquiry on the basis of Biblical Belief

I had a discussion with someone about artificial intelligence. The conversation was remarkable in that, I was intending on having an open ended discussion but my interlocutor felt attacked. I was struck because I did not foresee a problem.

It began while I was questioning what would pass as “verifiable evidence” that an artificial machine has attained a level of recognizable intelligence. Specifically I wanted to talk about what even is intelligence and what are we doing when we perform a test of any sort. Is intelligence some manifestation of outward behavior? Can a test indicate a binary answer to the question of intelligence? Can different tests lead to different assessments? How do our metaphysical assumptions about the philosophy of mind impact our investigation? Are animals intelligent? Can non biological matter achieve intelligence? Can intelligence only emerge from biological life? I truly think this is a fascinating topic to think about, and trusted that my interlocutor would be fascinated when thinking about some of these questions. I was wrong.

My stomach dropped. A simple discussion was actually perceived as an attack, or a challenge, an argument of sorts in which I was trying to convert someone of my position (which I hadn’t Even revealed yet). “You will never convince me, because it convicts with my belief in god” is what the response was. I found this interesting because I’ve had very deep conversations about this topic with other religious believers, and had very fruitful discussions. No one felt threatened. No one needs to feel threatened because this is not a challenge. “Strong AI is not possible because that would mean man can do what God did” was the follow up. This was a bit more interesting because it shows that rigid dogmatism can prevent someone from thinking deeply about concepts such as Tests, Cognition, intelligence etc. The topic is seen as an attack on the believers identity, there isn’t even a possibility for legitimate research because by definition we are not God so it’s Not possible.

This was a surprise to me, because it shows that dogmatism can literally prevent humanity from knowledge and discovery. I’ve heard all of the talk about how religion pollutes academic discourse, and honestly put it off. It felt like an ad hominem; I know plenty of religious believers who are intelligent, skeptical, curious, and willing to revise beliefs. I guess it’s true that personal experience is one of the strongest determinants of belief; this experience definitely shaped my outlook on the enterprise of religious belief.

The irony is that my personal position was aligned with my interlocutor. I don’t think strong AI is attainable; but for different reasons. I think the Chinese Room argument and the symbol grounding problem are enough to dispute an belief in functionalism of the mind. I also think that the church-Turing thesis demonstrates the impossibility of digital computers ever understanding semantics. At the core, computers are very good calculators that can simulate anything, but cognition and the mind cannot be reduced to a computation. Of course, being agnostic I am open to revise my beliefs. After all, these are just arguments. And what if analog computers can achieve intelligence? What if the church Turing thesis is proven wrong? What if I have an interaction with a computer that makes me change my mind? What if it can be shown that intelligence can exist outside of biological organisms? This is the whole point of a discussion. It’s fun to explore the possibilities. Maybe it’s possible we can’t engineer intelligence because we aren’t god! But maybe also we can engineer something intelligent, which makes us revise our understanding of what a soul is and it’s relation to the mind.

I never thought that AI would be a point of contention with a dogmatist. Dogmatism seems, ironically, to be something programmable into a Turing machine: if question belief, then reject discussion and put up blinders and be defensive. Is intelligence and inquisitiveness the antithesis of dogmatism? Is dogmatism somehow a component of intelligence and cognition? The overall experience was somewhat interesting; discussion can be used as a test to reveal a persons dogma.

10. Inconsistent Revelations

I was reading this blog post where the author attempts to refute(?) or respond to the argument from inconsistent revelations. This argument resonates with me because, as I look around, there have been and are currently thousands of religious traditions. Every tradition, claims authority and authenticity. To some extent, they are exclusionary. If we take that as the basic premise, no two religions or denominations within a religion can be correct. There is at most one correct “Revelation” and possibly none.

This thought resonates with me because I have never been religious, but try to consider how a person like myself may come to believe any of the existing ones. Simple questions arise: How do i know X is true over Y? How do I know the revelations claimed by X are more authentic than Y? How do I even know if revelations can be verified? Are revelations even a source of “knowledge”? Is there some sort of statistical likelihood of choosing X over Y on the basis of my geographical location and culture? Does the choice of religion somehow depend on a personal revelation? How would I even know if “God” is revealing something to me or if I am delusional?

I am currently excluding religions like Taoism which are more of philosophies, rather than a revealed religion like those of Abraham. Joseph Smith had some divine revelation, founding Mormonism. Christian denominations typically think these people are absurd; but on what basis can they claim their revelations are more valid than others?

This is how you have to treat this argument. It is less of an argument and more of a question: if you were dropped on this planet and have no knowledge of any world religion, on what basis do you select one over the other? Lets put aside questions of Gods existence and even the mere possibility of revelation being legit despite the serious problems with it as a method of acquiring some form of understanding. Maybe you’ll begin by reading comparative religion. You read the Quran and the Bible; both claim to be divinely inspired and inerrant. Putting aside internal contradictions within the text and lack of empirical validity, how does one choose the Bible over the Quran? What exactly is the decision criteria you apply when making your choice? It seems obvious that most Evangelicals from Alabama will never be a Muslim, and fundamentalists from Baghdad will likely never be a Christian. If your family is dogmatic, you will probably not explore other traditions. As a thinking individual, you will probably not want to consider number of affiliates as relevant, and consider the fact that where you are placed will have significant influence on the information you are assessing when making your choice. You may ask yourself “If I was a child growing up here, would I probably have chose this religion?”. How does one get assigned a higher probability than another? This is where religious authority comes in; and is very much the problem illustrated in the outsider test. Likewise, there is the argument from locality which also describes these geographical fluctuations.

So, it seems like you have a few options short of personal revelation which may or may not be valid (revelation has a strong agency sense to it, but things can be revealed without there being an agent revealing that thing!). You can assign each religion equal probabilities, and then each denomination in the religion a probability. You will find that this fraction approaches zero. You have a very small probability of doing it the “right” way assuming there even is a “right” way in the existing sets of religions. According to the article:

In mathematical terms, if it were to be assumed that:

The existence of some god is certain,
There is some number (n) of distinct, mutually exclusive faiths one could believe in,
Each of these faiths has a corresponding Hell, and
There is no way to tell which one, if any, were true a priori (by reason alone, without empirical observations)

Even within the Bible, for instance, there are (debated depending on your conservatism) many contradictions that can cause an outsider to have some concern. The study the internal consistency of the Bible is actually fascinating. The selection of biblical canon across the three largest denominations is interesting; as each claims the process was guided by the hand of God (literally the problem illustrated in the main thrust of the argument). However, it is common for a religious person to say “these are not contradictions” then attempt to rectify them. From an outsiders perspective it literally just looks like ad-hoc reasoning. They then might claim “well you just dont understand the bible” or “only true believers can understand it” which brings up the whole issue of revelation. I think there are some serious ones, like the issue with the Census. Here are some more and even some more. So, there is a problem. If I assume God exists with certainty, I take these texts as serious contenders, and I even open myself to the possibility of revelation; the question remains: what is the basis for choosing any? All things considered, why would anyone even want to consider this unless they were compelled to by some cosmic force that revealed to them their divine purpose?

If God wrote at least one of the Bibles, how do I know which one it is? How can I discern which ones were written by humans, and one divinely authored? I mean, this is really a ridiculous proposition to begin with. At some point, a human had to transcribe what he believed to be a vision or revelation. You are telling me there was no errors in the transcription process? On what basis can you claim this? Or any errors in the oral traditions that preceded the transcription? From an outsiders perspective, it is almost ridiculous to even select. Plus, we do not have the benefit of referencing scriptural verses to make our arguments more authoritative. I cannot presuppose the legitimacy of scripture like each and every religion does. The author of the article begins to make a simple logical mistake when he says

Assuming there is a God, then the fact that different scriptures contradict each other is not an issue. It simply means that one must be true while others must be false.

I do not know how you can make this conclusion without considering the possibility that they are all wrong. Why does one have to be true? Why can’t both have elements of truth in each of them? Why can’t they all be the products of deeply compelled humans who were false in what they believed? Its this sort of jumping to intermediary conclusions that I constantly see by religious people. This leads the author to the main counterargument in which they try to attack the two “assumptions of the argument”

The two assumptions here are:
1. Not everyone can receive revelation, and
2. There is no way to resolve conflicting claims by investigation.
I can’t speak for other religions, but neither of these apply to Christianity, so the argument fails.

He goes on to defeat the second assumption by claiming

First of all, not only is there a way to resolve these conflicting claims by ivestigation, but we are repeatedly invited by the Lord to do so. In both the Old and New Testaments, we are invited to test the word and judge it by the results we find. In the Old Testament, we have Malachi 3:10, in which the Lord says,

And then provides a quote from the Bible. At this point I slap my own face. They are doing exactly what the argument shows: reverting to scriptural authority to justify choosing their religion over others. THAT IS LITERALLY THE PROBLEM WE ARE SEEKING TO OVERCOME. I have this issue when I listen to social justice warriors repeat “systemic racism” like a malfunctioning computer when provided with counterevidence to their dogma.

The author then goes on to claim

Even if we do not believe, even if we can do no more than desire to know, we are invited to experiment upon the word. The chapter goes on to compare faith to a seed which, after some effort on our part, will bear fruit, and by that fruit we may judge if the tree is good or if it needs to be cut down. This is generally claimed by Christians to be a repeatable test (over 300k new converts annually to the LDS church alone), and can predict future results (If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine…”).
This process may sound familiar to the scientifically inclined. After all, the process being described here is basically the scientific method. We are invited to ask a question (“Is X true?”), do background research and investigate, construct a hypothesis, test hypothesis by experimentation, analyze results and draw conclusion (“That was great!/That was terrible!”), return and report findings (“X is/is not true.”).

Lets ignore the implied argument that 300k converts to LDS is somehow relevant to absolutely anything. I consider myself scientifically inclined, and find the methods of science absolutely no use to the problem of inconsistent revelations. What experiment will we be doing? Are we experimenting whether the Mormon founder, or any other religious founder, is true in their revelation? I am not sure how one would set up an experiment for this, considering it is just a question of testimonial legitimacy. What will we be measuring? What is the external validity? Can it be repeated? My brain is losing neurons trying to find the connection in this bogus analogy.

They then go on to say

Second, everyone is capable of receiving revelation. From the Prophet of the Lord (1 Kings 19) to the most stubborn sinner (Acts 22, Alma 36), anybody can receive a divine witness necessary to discern truth. In fact, not only is it possible for anyone, but it is absolutely essential for everyone. In Christian doctrine, the Holy Ghost is often described as the source of faith. Jesus taught, in John 15:26,

And then uses some bible verses as justification. This, again, presupposes a biblical faith that one must deem as true before using the verses in any authoritative way. THIS IS LITERALLY THE PROBLEM ILLUSTRATED IN THE ARGUMENT. And it is this sort of phenomenon which isn't worth engaging with; circularity.

The argument is not a proof against the existence of God. It is more of a thought experiment that says “Hey look at all of these contradictory religions, and historically, religions that failed. How can a rational person actually discern from all of these the correct one? How can I avoid choosing the wrong Hell? If the credibility of personal revelation is shaky at best, how can I trust that I am not wrong in my judgement? Was that voice in my head literally just my own?”. As the author states

Incidentally, I’m aware of the difficulties surrounding Religious Experience as a credible source of information, but this post operates under the assumption that there is, in fact, a God who does, in fact, commune with mortals, and it operates under that assumption because it was a part of the original argument.

It seems like you have to presuppose Gods existence to even consider revelation as possible, and then you have to have a method for figuring out whose revelation is true; which the author and everyone fails to do because there is no way without presupposing one of the scriptures truth. They just assume Christianity is true and then use some verses to dismiss the arguments. I personally think this is one of the strongest arguments favoring strong-form-agnosticism.

Many people have touched on this idea of the apologetic failure to explain the existence of religious plurality. See the video below for a more thorough critique:

Philosophical Failures of Christian Apologetics, Part 10: Other Religions by Philosophy: Engineered!

11. “Divine Ignorance” Arguments

Divine ignorance arguments most certainly arise out of The Book of Job. “Who are you to question anything, you ignorant peasant”, can quickly summarize the passage, when Job questions why he lost everything despite being pious. Job thinks he is innocent, and there is no justification for any of these punishments. It is a classic instance, and probably the very first, Theodicy; how to explain why an all loving God will allow suffering. In this instance, it is a test of faith and piety. Lets ignore the cruelty of the test (killing his children) and focus on the main thrust of the argument: God’s ways with man remain mysterious and inscrutable.

The argument schematic can be diagrammed below:

P1: Some suffering has occurred, or some event which is seemingly unnecessary.

P2: Humans do not have a “God Like” perspective.

P3: The person facing the issue cannot understand the point of the suffering

P4: The person concludes that there is no reason, and hence that God must not be omnibenevolent. Purposeless suffering etc.

C: The person is incorrect in their assessment, because they are too limited in their mental capacity to understand Gods Ways.

These types of responses are common when encountering a religious person. The schema reveals itself in many retorts when arguing against the efficacy of prayer: as in the case of “Why Won’t God Heal Amputees?”. The idea is that; who are you to say there is not a morally justifiable reason for the state of affairs?

This is definitely a type of argument from ignorance; or stems from it somehow. The form assumption here is:

We are too limited cognitively to understand the cosmic purpose, therefore we cannot assume there is no purpose

These defenses pop up all over the place. If you claim there are two contradictory passages in the Bible, someone can easily say “Well who are you to say that is a contradiction, maybe you are just too stupid. This is, after all, Gods Word. What makes you think this is a contradiction and not just your limited mental abilities?”. By Gods standards, this might have been inspired this way for a purpose that you simply cannot understand. It most certainly was not corrupted in the process of transcription and translation.

It is an awesome self defense mechanism. Consider a government who is torturing a group of ethnic minorities. Someone says “that is wrong, there is no point in doing this” and a defender of the regime says “who are you to say there is not a greater good this is serving, or that they don’t deserve it. We simply do not have the insight that the party members have”. In other words, we please ignorance and shift the explanation to a “higher form of cognition”. In what cases is suffering justified, anyway? In other words, what is the general rule that is applied to instances of just suffering? Is suffering always justified on the cosmic scale?

The argument extends even further. Lets say I point to some sort of inefficiency in design. Recently, a method was discovered that allows for plants to perform photosynthesis in the dark. Artificial photosynthesis is used because the natural process is extremely inefficient. If you believe in fine-tuning, or that this is the “Best of all possible worlds”, or any of those types of arguments, evidence of this may be baffling. They can, however, say “How do you know that is poor design, you would have to have the perspective of a perfect designer to understand the principles they have used to create this system”. From a higher perspective, we may be able to understand why things are the way they are. But alas, we are too stupid. Here is the point: If you invoke omnipotence of the God, by definition, we cannot understand anything because we are not god and not omnipotent.

I think this is detrimental, at the very least. We can simmer in our ignorance because there is no point in attempting to understand, since definitionally it is not possible for us to understand. You can defend any attribute of God you want, with this refutation strategy. The problem is that these defenses can be used for symmetrical arguments with opposite conclusions. This can be seen in the reverse ontological argument and applies here for this defense. Negative attributes of God can be defended on the same basis: He transcends us so we cannot possibly know. How do we know that God is good if he is beyond your understanding? How do we know that God is not good, if he is beyond your understanding?

This video really makes it obvious how the symmetry of this argument makes it void of anything substantive: The most OP argument for (defending) God
if objections to God’s supposed nature or behavior can be dismissed on the grounds that humans are incapable of understanding the ways of God, than any description of God’s nature or behavior can be dismissed on the grounds that humans are incapable of understanding the ways of God

The defense is belief preserving and unfalsifiable. The video describes it as an ad-hoc hypothesis similar to the dragon in my garage argument. I think it is also a form of argument from ignorance. Consider the following:

Arguments from self-knowing take the form:
If P were true then I would know it; in fact I do not know it; therefore P cannot be true.
If Q were false then I would know it; in fact I do not know it; therefore Q cannot be false.
In practice these arguments are often unsound and rely on the truth of the supporting premise. For example, the claim that If I had just sat on a wild porcupine then I would know it is probably not fallacious and depends entirely on the truth of the first premise (the ability to know it).

12. Euthyphro’s Dilemma

This is coming as a response to something I read on GotQuestions . First to note, Abrahamic Theists automatically reject this as a false dichotomy. This is expected, one horn of the dichotomy calls into question the arbitrariness of moral commands and the other calls into question the omnipotence of God. This is essentially what this article maintains and is representative of what sort of responses you can expect from Judeo-Christian apologetics. Much of this comes from Thomas Aquinas, or is derivative thereof. God is fully omniscient and cannot will something not good. We can go into the details from professional philosophers another time. My main interest is what this website purports.

“Fortunately, God is both supremely sovereign and good. Therefore, God’s nature itself can serve as the standard of goodness, and God can base His declarations of goodness on Himself. God’s nature is unchangeable and wholly good; thus, His will is not arbitrary, and His declarations are always true. This solves both issues.”

I do not see how this resolves anything. Instead of “Gods Command” serving as the basis of morality, Gods nature, which is inherently perfect, can self referentially refer to itself and declare something good. God’s nature is the justification for something being good, not the command. No command can flow from him that is bad. To me, this seems like we are just playing with words. There is no outside standard God refers to, he is the standard. This is simply a reassertion of the arbitrariness of divine command being a source of morality; except Theists have insulated themselves by defining God himself as the source of Good. A very clever rhetorical tactic, to say the least. If I please, I can redefine anything to resolve issues attributed to my belief system. Isn’t that such an amazing thing about dogma? The circularity pains me. To summarize: Gods commands are not arbitrary because he is the definition of good, he refers to himself when forming commands, and (as an additional benefit) it doesn’t even matter because his commands are always true. Why are they always true? Because truth can only come from him, and his commands are not only true, they are good because he is good. He is all that is good and true. This resolves nothing; all the Theist has done is obfuscate terminology, providing a smoke screen for the lack of defense. Belief preservation in action.

But wait, there is more. This is where I really have opinions:

“How is God the standard of goodness? Because He is the creator. A thing’s goodness is determined by its purpose. A dull knife is not a good knife because the purpose of a knife is to cut. Sharpness is bad for a shoe, however, for a good shoe is one that is comfortable and supportive to a foot. God, as creator, is the determiner of all purposes of His creation. What He makes is made purposefully, and anything that stands in the way of that purpose is bad. Rape is evil because that is not what sex is made to be. Murder is evil because it is not the purpose of humans to arbitrarily decide when people should die. (Note that this does not necessarily vilify all human-caused deaths, such as capital punishment or war. If God has stated guidelines for these actions, then it is no longer arbitrary human will being carried out.)
In conclusion, a thing is good to the degree that it fulfills its purposes. Because God is the creator of all things, according to His own good nature, He is therefore both the standard and declarer of goodness.”

“A thing’s goodness is determined by its purpose”

So if we cannot discern goodness without determining purpose, we can’t evaluate whether it’s “performing relative to end goals”. All things that are created have purpose. Presumably, God was not created. Since purpose is attributable only to the thing being created, if it is not created then it is purposeless. If it has no purpose, then there is no way of discerning it’s goodness. So how do we know God is good, given that he is uncreated and lacking “purpose” in the sense used in the article? This merely begs the question yet again.

Almost every apologetic response sounds like this: “uhh derrr God is Good, derr, false dilemma derr”. Which I say: If God’s nature is “Good” then… we shift the problem…

1. we vacate the term “good” of independent meaning and it just becomes a stand-in for saying “godly”

2. consequently, there again arises a question why is godliness desirable, or why one ought to do things that are godly. This is a question of why certain end-goals are desirable in the first place. It also implies the question “Why ‘ought’ we do things that are commanded?”

Therefore we create a new dilemma:

1. God’s nature is said to be good in virtue of God having it

2. God’s nature is said to be good in virtue of some other standard

We’ve effectively pushed the problem from God’s will to God’s nature and we’ve solved nothing, and that’s why Euthyphro’s dilemma is still mostly expressed in its original form.

Stating that God == Good simply pushes the problem out one step. Philosopher Jeremy Koons points this out: “Are the properties like loving-kindness, impartiality, and generosity good because god possesses them in his nature, or does god possess them in his nature because they are good?”. Apologists respond by choosing the first horn of the dilemma; God being Good is a philosophical primitive (brute fact). The problem is that Modified Divine Command Theory says that the intentions and consequences of an action have absolutely no bearing on the goodness of that action. This conclusion is extremely counter-intuitive, and violates our deeply held moral intuitions. This precisely contradicts the justification from intuition apologists uses to support the second premise in the original argument; someone can state with equal validity that the justification for P2 is counter-intuitive.

Creator analogies really show the shallowness of these responses. The problems with equivocating “Moral Goodness” with proper functioning of objects is two-fold: many objects are not unilaterally determined by a single function so multiple criterion are necessarily applied when evaluating functionality, and functionality is not equivalent to moral goodness. When i say “this is a good knife” i am referring to a specific use-case and that the thing functions as expected. I doubt anyone can agree that mechanical functionality is equivalent to moral goodness. Further, a good knife is end use dependent. Sharpness may be entirely irrelevant if my only knife is a cleaver but I need to cut a small carrot. Goodness is therefore relative to end-goals? What makes the end-goal good to begin with? Theists simply push the “Good” claim elsewhere, leaving it unanswered. Or simply say, “Gods goals are good because he is the source of Good”. Back to circularity. Labelling an attribute as “Good” is dependent on my use-case; this is the only way it can be measured. The question remains; why is my use case worth pursuing? This is one of the problems with analogical reasoning and teleology.

The main issue here, is that if we take this analogy to its fullest extent, there could have very well been multiple creators, a team of creators and an architect, or an open source community of Gods contributing to the design. Further, creation of anything is not arbitrary; there are programming principles and programming paradigms that are referenced when considering design decisions. Where do these come from? Well, I suppose a Theist can say that, they come from God. The same defense can be applied in this instance. In the software design space, these came from discovery; trial and error, mathematics, programming philosophies etc. I do not want to overstretch myself here but; is it a stretch to say that moral goods may also be discovered in a similar fashion? And if we take the analogy seriously, can we rule out any of the aforementioned issues? I have a real difficulty with “What He makes is made purposefully, and anything that stands in the way of that purpose is bad”. If he makes everything, then he also makes the thing which stands in the way of the other things purpose? Sounds like a very confused programmer. “Rape is evil because that is not what sex is made to be”; God creates Rape, is omniscient so knows who will rape and who will be raped, and then punish them. God knows in advance who will be punished and raped? Maybe the proper analogy should be: God created a complex system that is computationally irreducible in the Wolfram sense and hence is deterministic but unpredictable so things he would not want to occur happen due to the dynamics of the system.

But hey, if you can just define God to be that which is irrefutable, then there is nothing we can really do at this point. See more on perfect being theology if you wish to get a true sense of the scope. If you believe that he is the standard and declarer of goodness, then you have defined yourself in such a way to be immune to any contrary thought. In sum, all you really can do with these types of defenses is to point out circularity and suggest alternative definitions of God that do not force you into pigeon holes.

13. Ridiculous Apologetics

I don’t know why I do this to myself. It is so addictive; reading and listening to the misunderstandings and sophistry of apologists. It just wastes so much of my time. Here are two gems that I cannot help myself but respond to:

So what is it: Can irreligious (or any non-Christian for that matter, let alone Atheist) understand the Bible or not? Both authors seem to come from conservative camps, on both websites there is a constant reference to Discovery Institute showing that science proves God, both appear to be biblical literalists and believe in inerrancy. I wonder why they diverge on this point? I will start with the first article, as it demonstrates dogmatism in the extreme. The main point is that only Christians can truly understand the bible.

The New Testament contains proving criteria for anyone who asserts they are an authority in these texts. First, they must be a believer in Christ and filled with the Holy Spirit. Second, they must believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God and is the primary method of communication God has chosen to reveal Himself. Jesus said that unless a person is “born again” by the Spirit of God, they will not have the capacity to understand the surviving texts of the New Testament. Paul elaborated on this principle by saying that what is written and preserved for us is “spiritually discerned.” This means that only those who believe God exists and are diligently seeking Him (Hebrews 11:6) have the capacity to understand the texts of the Bible and be a genuine scholar, through decades of diligent study in these texts.

This is of course, very convenient, but begs the question of the relevancy of the gospels to begin with for converting non-Christians. You cannot understand the bible unless you are born again. How can I be born again? Well, maybe I read the Gospels. If they are unconvincing, its perhaps because I do not have the holy spirit flowing within me. How can I get that? Well, you’ve got to be born again. You see the circle? How can I believe if the very thing that is supposed to cause my belief, I cannot understand because I am not a believer?

Who is qualified to be a scholar? Well, only Christians of course. Suppose a Christian, after a life-time of study, still cannot grasp some of the oddities in the bible? What if they, dare I say, find a contradiction and are not convinced by their pastor’s attempt to explain it away? Well, they are not a Christian. A TRUE Christian would believe that this thing is inerrant so its not a contradiction. If you struggle with it, maybe you just don’t have the Holy Spirit running through your veins. Or perhaps, you were not diligent enough; or worse, you used a secular method to read it. Or perhaps, you just need to study it longer. What are the religious methods that are acceptable?

Today, modern New Testament scholarship includes atheist scholars. The Christian church has permitted this because these persons have done their due diligence in obtaining an advanced degree. The problem is that a PhD does not convey the Holy Spirit to anyone. Jesus said that no scholar can understand the texts about Him without the Holy Spirit.
Jesus often condemned the leaders of Israel, who were the “Doctors of the Law” while committing grievous errors in their exposition and hermeneutics of the Hebrew scriptures.

Well, it looks like if you commit yourself to studying hermeneutic methods, textual criticism, learn the language it was written in to discern the context, and go to school to learn these things; you are still unable despite your religiosity.

When Nicodemus came to Jesus late one night, he was a PhD in the Hebrew scriptures but he didn’t recognize that Jesus was the Messiah who was promised by the Old Testament scriptures. An advanced education prevented what was most needed: the Spirit of God that imparts genuine knowledge.
A person without the Spirit of God is not capable of genuine scholarship concerning the New Testament. We see this demonstrated by the comments and conclusions of atheist scholars in their published works concerning the New Testament. There are numerous errors made by these men and women because they do not have the ability to comprehend what they are seeking to evaluate.

I question if Nicodemus had a PhD, given this institution did not exist for about 1200 years after his death. Lets call him an expert, or authority, instead. Why did he not recognize Jesus as the Messiah? Well, perhaps, like pretty much every other Jew, they have reasons. Perhaps they understood the Tanakh differently than the apostles and gentiles who later converted. Do differences in scriptural understanding occur in Christianity? Without a doubt. The three major denominations do not even have an identical set of canonical texts. I guess having the Holy Spirit running through your veins doesn’t help all that much. Or maybe those “other” denominations are heretics. How can we resolve these theological disputes? Whose knowledge is genuinely inspired by the Holy Spirit?

A person without the Spirit of God cannot comprehend what they seek to evaluate. This reminds of the rhetorical strategies people use when justifying standpoint epistemology and lived experience; true knowledge is not accessible to you because you are not part of this identity category.

To top it off, here is this gem

This book provides the evidence that proves an atheist New Testament scholar is not qualified to evaluate or make valid conclusions regarding the New Testament. In these twelve chapters, the errors and incorrect conclusions of atheist scholars are revealed, which prove they are incapable of unbiased criticism because of their unbelief.

By default, you are an Atheist if you dispute the biblical inerrancy claim. If you find a conclusion that differs from biblical literalism, you are by this definition, actually not a genuine Christian.

Lets just pick apart the last sentence: “the errors and incorrect conclusions of atheist scholars are revealed, which prove they are incapable of unbiased criticism because of their unbelief”. Even if, an Atheist is incorrect in a conclusion, this does not ipso-facto demonstrate bias. Being incorrect is not proof of agenda or bias. This should be self-evident to any critical thinker; it does not follow necessarily because there are alternative possibilities that can be more or less plausible. A claim of perverse intention or bias will require evidence in favor of that assertion. How do we know their conclusions are errors or incorrect? What method is the author appealing to that shows the superiority over their adversary? Well, there is no method. It is based on group identity. Since they are not a Christian, and do not have the Holy Spirit imparting genuine knowledge into them, they cannot possibly know. Since they do not have the means for genuine knowledge, they can be written off as perverse or inauthentic. Methods actually do not matter, the source of understanding is inaccessible to the out group. The only thing that matters, is that you agree with the Author and can demonstrate to the community that you are one of them. How can you do that? Well, you agree with what they say, and eat your juice and cracker every Sunday. This is an astounding belief preserving mechanism that is truly narcissistic on a scale that behooves me. It should go without saying: genuine knowledge will be accessible to everyone. For example, Calculus is something everyone can learn.

The irony is that he sure comes off as the Jewish “Doctor of Law” they disdain so heavily.

Lets move on to the next article: Cognitive Bias: The Reason Atheist’s Cannot Understand The Bible

To begin, a symmetrical argument runs in the opposite direction. I can write an article called “Cognitive Bias: The Reason Theists Believe in the Bible”. Everyone has cognitive biases. In fact, the main research that demonstrates this (Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases, Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment, and Choices, Values, and Frames) is a major reason why some people are agnostic. Also, the statistical and research methodology used to acquire these results causes many people to rethink their theism. The best part about all of this is: Its accessible to all of us, regardless of your group identity! It is genuine knowledge, can be repeatedly tested, checked for error, and is open to feedback and scrutiny. It actually makes the field stronger, no Holy Spirit needed!

Secular humanists do not rely on faith or any idea that a Being of superior intelligence, moral perfection, or unlimited power, exists. Science, reason, human wisdom, and education are the sources used to find solutions for human problems.
On the opposite end of the secular humanist worldview is the Christian worldview that sees an unlimited and loving Being as the center of all life and the universe. Human beings exist for a purpose, because they were created out of love to know and experience a life of beauty and perfection.

It sounds like you are about to use the secular methods to demonstrate why we cannot understand the Bible. Are you saying, you are going to use methodology developed without the Holy Spirit to show the falsity of irreligion? Maybe you should think twice, it probably isn’t genuine knowledge. Some of these methods were used to criticize the bible, and stories within the bible. Are they only valid when wielded against your enemy?

When human beings seek to understand the world around them they look through eyes that see from a particular bias. A worldview is the framework from where this bias has developed.
Every ideology, philosophy, or theology originates from a particular approach that is determined by one of two different and divergent views of life and the universe.
When a person believes that human beings are the center of the universe, and the material world is all that exists, this will affect everything they think about and how they form conclusions in every matter of their life.
When a person believes that God is the center of the universe and He created human beings for a purpose, this will affect everything they think about and how they form conclusions in every matter of their life.
The secular view of life is that we decide what is right and wrong in our life, depending upon our circumstances. The Biblical worldview is that all of life is determined by what God has said and His will for human life.
The Christian worldview of right and wrong are not subjective; they were determined and framed by a Being who is perfect in every regard. The laws that God framed for the universe govern the function of the cosmos and the moral behavior of all beings made in His image. These laws are immutable.
This Biblical worldview is based upon the certainty that the Bible is the word of the Eternal God, and contains all the wisdom needed for man in all matters that concern human life and our existence on earth. The Bible was composed by men who had set themselves apart for God, and they recorded His principles, laws, prophecies, warnings, and instruction that He determined for all human beings.

Of course, the author brings up the subjective/objective false dichotomy between religious morality and secular morality. This is not the point of this article, but feel free to google the arguments for objective secular morality, subjective religious morality, problems with divine command theory, evolution of religious morality since antiquity, moral psychology, the problem with religious morality, and list of ethical theories to decide where you stand on the distinction. Maybe google around and see how religious people approach the Trolley Problem and notice quickly how opinions diverge. Or on say, the tragedy of the commons. I argue that, not only is religious morality insufficient at explaining the appropriate course of action, it fundamentally cannot without appealing to one of the ethical theories in the link I provided. Anyway, I am an agnostic and not a moral subjectivist. Morality is not subjective, acquiring or discovering it is however dependent on epistemic state and general knowledge conditions.

This section of the authors article however, does not demonstrate how the world view effects how one comes to conclusions about facts or cause-effect relations. He is only explaining a difference (in simplified fashion) how world views influence moral behavior.

The Danger Of Assumptions
A basic rule for determining reliability for all ancient documents that assert eyewitness testimony is that every document should be assumed trustworthy, unless it can be shown unreliable through the burden of proof.

This is false. Witness testimony is, however, deemed less trustworthy compared to more reliable methods of knowledge acquisition based on the same premise in the title of your article and general understanding of witness testimony in the court of law. Sometimes this is all we have, but our standards to not drop. Imagine if they used this "rule of reliability" consistently across other revealed religions.

One of the techniques utilized in document analysis is that when an examiner uses the presumption that the subject is lying, the test will always be self-refuting. The presumption that a person is always lying, while performing any examination for truth, is pointless, since the conclusion is already made before the examination has begun.[1]
Unless we assume a general presumption of truth in every testimony, we will never be capable of determining whether anything is actually true. The only effective method that actually allows a professional examiner to determine truthful testimony is the presumption of truth at the onset.[2]

Again, False. No one assumes biblical witnesses are lying as a default, but it is a possibility. The biased thing to do, is assume there are no errors in the testimony, there is no possibility of lying, and no alternative explanation of the intentions of the witness; and then shield yourself off from all possible criticisms on the basis that they are not part of your in-group. What historians instead do, is try to determine if the testimony is legendary or historically valid. But you reject all of this, because they use secular methods that you have already written off as invalid. In words inspired by you “You presume they are lying and the conclusions are false because of their religiosity”.

The methods that modern atheist scholars often use today in determining the reliability of the New Testament is the assumption that the text must not be true due to its supernatural references. If any examiner uses this method, even though the text specifies supernatural phenomenon, the result will always be inaccurate. The examiner must let the textual evidence itself determine the conclusions, not their personal bias at the onset.

Surprise, False again. “Atheist Scholars” are not the only ones who use these, and they are not applied strictly to the bible. They are and can be used by anyone looking to understand an ancient text that's been transmitted orally for 50 years, copied countless times, retranslated many times, we don’t have the originals, with literary-style language instead of a historical reporting of facts. The same methods are used to study Plato and Socrates. You can use them too if you want.

“Supernatural references” are not the issue. The question is, can you demonstrate a supernatural occurrence has happened when the only evidence is biblical witness testimony? Our Lady of Fatima is very well attested, but I am sure you will reject it based on your theological assumption. The problem is something of consistency: there is no way to validate supernatural claims made in any religious scripture on empirical methods. You either believe it or not; based on your worldview that is influenced by your theology. You reject Fatima, I reject Fatima, You reject Muhammad, I reject Muhammad, you accept the resurrection, I reject the resurrection. What is your basis for accepting it? The same basis as others: Faith. The ad-hoc justification is pathetic. Jesus rising from the dead is one possible explanation of many, based on an subset of available data that is insufficient and incomplete to make such a bold assertion: like every other supernatural claim to be uttered. Do not confuse Bias with higher epistemic standards.

In order to rightly determine whether the New Testament is telling the truth about Jesus, we must begin with the assumption that the narratives are true, and then see if there is any evidence to disprove the assertions made in the text.

Shifting the burden of proof. Okay. Have you ruled out every other religious claim on the basis of the evidence? Probably not. You assume the others are wrong. In fact, you kind of have to. There are so many other religions it would be kind of hard to determine the merit of all of them. Have you read the Quran? Well, you have to assume it is true then.

When Jesus told these men that He would soon depart earth and return to heaven, He stated that each man would remember and write according to his individual remembrance as he was enabled to do this by the Holy Spirit.[3] It is the power of God’s Spirit that enabled these men to write personal testimony that was both accurate and true.
Each of these men wrote as the Holy Spirit reminded them of these events. When we examine the individual testimonies of these men, we find that they are all telling us the same important and primary events of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. There are details that some of the Gospel writers included, that others did not place in their testimony. There are events omitted from the testimony of some Gospel writers that others included.

So, the bible says that the Holy Spirit will enable them to write testimony that is both accurate and true. The Holy spirit reminded them of the events. How do you know the Quran or any other religious text claiming divinity was not inspired by their conception of God? is it “because the bible says so?”. Not surprising, the reliability of the witness testimony is irrelevant if you assume that the Holy Spirit guided them, and that the Holy Spirit is the only mechanism for generating genuine knowledge. The claim is simply irrefutable, belief preserving, and dogmatic. Why even pretend that their is evidence supporting your position? The very nature of evidence presupposes that something is potentially falsifiable upon investigation, until ruled out that it stands. Your very assumption is unfalsifiable, and unempirical. This is not a matter of “Bias”. You are simply throwing the term “bias” around as a rhetorical tactic to persuade believers and reaffirm their beliefs. You are not actually interested in applying an analysis to determine if someone is biased. If there are doubts about the witness testimony, it does not come from the assertion that all witness testimony is unreliable prima facie. It comes from rejecting the assumption that the holy spirit is the only valid form of knowledge because that is simply an insulating assumption that helps you persist and defend the dogma of the religion. Every religion has this to some extent. Its not stupid to have Faith. It is stupid to pretend that your faith was formed through evidential reasoning.

It is important to also understand that Jesus called each man according to the background and personality of each man, to record testimony that highlights a particular important aspect of Jesus’ life and ministry on earth.

Where does it say that? Curious, there is no citation.

Although scholars were never historically required to have a particular worldview in order to navigate ancient texts and apply literary criticism to these extant manuscripts concerning the New Testament, a secular humanist worldview renders the manuscripts of the New Testament ineffective and powerless.

What if a religious person from a different tradition picks it up and rejects it on the same basis of a “secular atheist”? The conclusion is pathetic. “Jesus and Paul stated that unless a person is “born again” by the Holy Spirit, after turning from their sins and trust fully in Jesus, they cannot understand the Bible”. I can literally say this about anything my interlocutor disagrees with; you have to believe it in order to believe it. You have to just trust me. You just have a hardened heart. You are just biased. You are just stupid. It is books like these that create an even larger divide between religious and irreligious communities. What happens to all of those who had their born again experience and still rejected the biblical inerrancy assumption later in their lives? Well, they never truly had an experience of the holy spirit, they were never genuine Christians, they were actually never born again unlike “me” because im so special. Such a narcissistic world view. This is nothing but Gaslighting.

I'd like to finish this off with an internal dialogue I had once while driving.

I was driving and I came across a sign that said dahlE like for a political representative advertising their campaign. I found this remarkable because at the same time I was listening to a discussion about generative artificial intelligence. As you may know Dall-E is an artificial intelligence model that generates images from text data. My reaction to viewing the sign was interesting and after some introspection I realized something about humans and how we see remarkable things and correlate them with our life. I was somewhat moved by the lecture I was listening to because it’s , you know , it’s interesting that we are building machines that can do creative tasks that we previously thought only humans were capable of doing. I found this remarkable because it was somewhat motivating to pursue this line of research further. This was around the same time I saw the sign that said vote for Dahle. Immediately my brain took this to be a sign, a sign in the metaphorical sense, that it is calling upon me to study this further. I thought this is interesting because I immediately stopped and said oh this is merely correlational , there’s no reason for me to think that there’s some sort of purpose behind the sign being here and me listening to This podcast or whatever. But I thought it was interesting because it’s in a sense akin to a divine message, people get inspired to do things because of some sequence of events or thing they see in reality and think that some higher power is calling upon them to act in a certain way. I am not religious I don’t believe in God but I immediately took the two to correlate with one another and furthermore that there was a purpose behind me seeing the sign. This is interesting because it points to something about the human psyche; there may be an innate tendency to see something as purposeful or in some sense directed at you for a particular reason when its purely coincidental. I think revelation and to some extent miracles work in this fashion; we see two completely uncorrelated events but by chance , the two happen to in someway imply the other. Like in this example what are the odds of me learning about Dall-E and then coming across a sign that says the same exact thing. There has to be a reason for it right this can’t just be coincidental? Even for nonbelievers, for people who are agnostic or atheist this is built-in to the mind to see independent events or mutually exclusive events as in someway dependent or caused with a purpose or goal or objective in mind to change your behavior in someway or another. This is the basis of revelation; believing that some thing is speaking to you from outside of this world. The coincidence can’t be possible , it’s not even possible for it to be random or maybe your perception is dictated by this psychological tendency to isolate events of the sort and extract meaning from it. Divine revelation and miracles are two sides of the same coin. They both represent something unlikely that has been caused or can be explained by appealing to something metaphysical or beyond this world ; some thing unworldly has done this thing there is no natural explanation for it. I think this is a deep tendency; we have the tendency to see agency in things that may not necessarily at face value have any agency at all. I think this tendency goes beyond divine discussions. The tendency for people to see agency or deliberate motivation by something or someone to explain unexplainable events happens all the time. Take the smart phone for example. People are amazed that “the computer knows what I want to search for when I open google“. What’s happening however is that the computer doesn’t know anything because the computer doesn’t have agency it is just learning from a large amount of data what statistical regularities there are among search behavior on the platform. But people will insist that the computer knows and preempts and predicts what you will want to search for as if it is an oracle , an omniscient oracle. We assign it agency and anthropomorphize because it’s so ingrained in our vocabulary to explain things in such a way; it helps us make sense of the world when we express events as having intention/telos because we have intentions. Take another example something related to the economy; when things happen like a recession or a business cycle or anything that seems anomalous. The first thing that happens is that people try to explain the event with agency-vocabulary; some agent has been acting perniciously or has been motivated to cause this event. They will tend to refer to politicians being somehow behind it or devising a plan for this to happen. Obviously, the event could have happened because of complex interwoven variables interacting in such a way to produce unseen or unexpected outcomes. Complexity has nothing to do with it. Intention and motivation has everything to do with it ; all events can be explained by this agency notion. Perhaps this is why conspiracies will always surface; its ingrained in us to “see purpose” in purposeless sequences of events, this happens all the time in almost every domain of inquiry. You can think of how people explain poverty. Typically it is explained by someone making choices for them to be in the situation they’re in. Or if someone is rich the explanation is that they were greedy and motivated and did some behavior to get there.

When I was driving to Oregon we were approaching the pass to Mount Shasta and realized that we needed chains; the highway was also closed temporarily. So we went into town and grab some chains and on the way out I just happened to glance at the tire and noticed that there was a huge nail in it. This nail couldn’t stay in there; we were driving in unsafe conditions and the tire could have popped. If it pops it’s likely that we would’ve spun out of control and got hurt in a car accident. We got lucky; were able to get the tire changed immediately by the tire people. One can say that we avoided some sort of catastrophe or that we were being watched over and that there was a motivation or a purpose behind me noticing that there was a nail in the tire and also for the tire people to change it quickly so we weren’t driving in a blizzard on our way to Oregon. Some people can take this event or honestly any other event and interpret it as divine intervention. Of course the opposite can never hold true. At some point I will probably get in an accident because I did not take the precaution of making sure everything was OK before I started to drive. I was overly cautious in this situation because the context called for it, but presumably at some point in the future when the situation doesn’t call for it I will overlook something like this and proceed to drive. This will hold for any other example of where I got injured or died because of my lack of perceptive ability in the situation ; perhaps I was tired. Both situations can be interpreted in an ad hoc way to explain my outcome after the fact. In the case where I am injured one can say that the purpose was for me to learn from the situation. In the first case someone can say the purpose was for me to be safe and that there is a reason for me to be around still. In both cases agency and purpose is the explanatory source of the outcome and typically a divine agency responsible for allowing or for not allowing an event to happen. The divine figure always has good intentions because they are the definition of good. So in the case where I die there is some reason that is good for it to happen but we will potentially never understand because we are not omniscient and we are limited in our ability to find meaning in in the suffering.

I think this is a framework for explanation and that there are many frameworks for explaining various events. There are many types of events so there are many different types of explanations; very similar to how there are different statistical methodologies for different inference problems. Using one method inappropriately out of context will yield an inaccurate inference. This particular example is the teleological explanation. It explains things in terms of motivations and purpose but there are mechanical explanations of nature as well. In some sense everything has to have an explanation or we feel like there has to be an explanation of everything, there can’t be random events; there can’t be unexplained events it’s just not psychologically satisfying and easiest thing to comprehend is motives because we have motives and we have purpose and our behavior is directed. It satisfies our craving to have why explanations versus how explanations or what explanations. A mechanical description is purely a non-normative description but teleological explanations has a degree of normativity involved; it is guided by purpose, cause-and-effect behavior towards a goal. This is why Aristotelian notions of thinking have pervaded science for a long time and we never had any progress. It used to be asked what the purpose of a mountain was rather than explaining how the mountain came to be. The purpose of the mountain was its explanation, specifically with regards to how it serves human interests. The end-goal is the explanation. When we suffer we feel grief; the fact of the matter is some thing happened that we did not want and we want the satisfaction of understanding why the event occurred. This is where divine teleology comes in.

This type of explanation and this tendency to see agency behind events is not just with the example of suffering; it holds with the aforementioned example above where I merely saw two completely independent things and tied meaning/purpose to it. There has to be a reason why I saw these two unrelated things. This interpretation quickly redirected my behavior in such a way to reformulate my own motivations and and point them towards something new; it was a catalyst. I see the sign and now I understand what I need to do. I think we have the need to be directed by the signs because sometimes it’s ambiguous to know what direction to take or what to do in life. In situations with agents causing outcomes like in the example of an economy, it becomes difficult to explain things mechanically because the components actually have agency and have an ability to take in feedback from their environment but they are also in a sense behaving indeterministically; their behavior can’t fully be explained and so the aggregate outcomes can’t really be predicted or explained either because the components are not simple atomic immutable objects as they are in physics.

People often say that if there is no God then there is no divine purpose and that things are meaningless but what they have to consider is that maybe we are the ones who are actually doing the meaning making. We are the ones who are ascribing meaning to events we can’t explain or things that seem completely anomalous or miraculous. In the example above I found meaning in something completely trivial and inconsequential. I can find meaning anywhere and I can make meaning however and I can share that with others. And in some sense meaning has to be shared with others otherwise it’s meaningless. Even within a meaning system like religion we are the ones who have to assign meaning to what we believe to be inspired texts. We presuppose the existence of God in a certain theological framework, with certain attributes, and then interpret the signs as best we can in order to make meaning. But the meaning is not obvious and it has to be made by us. It’s not obvious when you read the Bible or the Quran what it means and what it is directing you to do. We impose meaning on it, in teleological manner, using whatever method available to us.

The sign DahlE would have been meaningless if I drove by it 10 years ago; our interpretation of arbitrary meaningless symbols seems conditional on culture and context.

Deborah Kelemen, professor of psychological and brain sciences, developed a notion called promiscuous teleology, where she demonstrated experimentally the natural tendency for children/adults to see purpose in meaningless events. The idea behind the adjective “promiscuity” is that teleological explanations are overused, favored over alternative types of explanations. As mentioned above in my personal example, explaining an event or mere correlation in terms of purpose seems to be a default explanation critical thinkers should overcome, similar to any other cognitive bias. This tendency can explain a lot, like why so many Americans reject the Theory of Evolution. Could this predict and explain variations of theistic belief and subsequently concepts like creationism ? Patternicity and Agenticity are related concepts, it’s like we mine our sensory data and construct causal connections that are absent and attribute them to an agent.

Okay anyways this is getting extremely long. All I wanted to do was kind of go through the reasoning process of someone who calls themselves an agnostic. Maybe some agnostics would resonate with this. Who knows.

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